Talking about months and dates
Talking about time in Italian is straightforward once you know a few basic rules. The Italian months of the year look very similar to their English counterparts, making them easy to memorize. For example, it is easy to guess that gennaio is January and novembre is November.
However, putting these words into sentences can be tricky for English speakers. We are used to capitalizing months and using specific prepositions like "in", "on", and "of" to format dates. Italian simplifies a lot of this, but it requires breaking some English habits.
The first rule to remember is a simple spelling difference. In Italian, months are always written in lowercase unless they are at the beginning of a sentence.
When you want to say that something happens "in" a certain month, you do not use an article. Instead, you simply use the preposition a or in right before the month. Both are correct and widely used, though a is very common in everyday Italian. If the month starts with a vowel, like agosto or aprile, the preposition a usually changes to ad to make pronunciation easier.
Things change when you want to give a full date. In English, we say "on May 5" or "on the 5th of May". Italian formatting is much more direct. You drop the prepositions completely. There is no word for "on" and no word for "of".
Instead, you just use the definite article il, followed by the number, and then the lowercase month.
There is one small exception when giving specific dates. For every day of the month from the second to the thirty-first, you use a normal number like 2, 14, or 25. However, for the very first day of the month, you must use the word primo (first).
To sum up, always write Italian months in lowercase. When talking about a month generally, use a or in with no article. When giving a specific date, start with il followed by the number and the month, and remember to use primo for the first day of any month.