Días, meses y fechas
Days and months in Spanish are ordinary lowercase nouns — lunes, enero — and nobody capitalises them. Dates run on one unchanging formula: el + number + de + month, as in el cinco de mayo. On top of that sit the four estaciones, and that is where a Latin American calendar parts company with a European one: diciembre is high summer in Santiago and Buenos Aires, and near the equator the year splits into rainy and dry instead of into four.
The seven days
lunes, martes, miércoles, jueves, viernes, sábado, domingo. Seven words, all masculine, and — the part English speakers forget every single time — all lowercase, in the middle of a sentence and at the head of a date alike. Five of them never change in the plural: el lunes is 'on Monday', los lunes is 'on Mondays', and the word itself does not move. Only the weekend two grow an ending: los sábados, los domingos. Notice also that the little el or los is doing the job English does with 'on' — there is no separate word for it here. El jueves tengo clase. Los viernes no trabajo. One small thing to expect: plenty of calendars printed in Mexico, Colombia and Peru open the week on domingo, so don't be thrown when the first column is Sunday.
The twelve months
enero, febrero, marzo, abril, mayo, junio, julio, agosto, septiembre, octubre, noviembre, diciembre. Masculine, lowercase, and they travel with en and nothing else: en enero, en agosto, en diciembre. No article — en el agosto is not a thing anyone says. One spelling note worth carrying: in Peru and the Southern Cone you will see setiembre printed on forms and in newspapers. It is a second correct spelling of septiembre, not a typo, and in ordinary speech the two sound nearly identical.
Building a date
The formula never varies: el + number + de + month + de + year. el cinco de mayo. el veinticinco de diciembre. el dieciséis de septiembre de 1810. The numbers are the plain counting numbers from last lesson — Spanish does not say 'fifth' or 'twenty-fifth' in a date. The single exception is the first day of the month, which has its own word: el primero de enero, el primero de mayo. Across Latin America that is what people say and what the calendar prints; el uno de enero is the Spanish of Spain and will be understood, but it is not the local shape. Written in digits the day comes first, so 5/5/2024 is el cinco de mayo de dos mil veinticuatro and 3/11/2024 is the third of November, not March 11.
Asking for the day and the date
¿Qué día es hoy? asks which day of the week, and the answer is short: Hoy es martes. ¿Qué fecha es hoy? asks for the number: Hoy es el ocho de marzo. In Mexico and Colombia you will hear ¿A cómo estamos hoy? just as often, along with ¿A cuántos estamos?, both answered with Estamos a ocho de marzo. To pin an event to the calendar the verb is ser, never estar: Mi cumpleaños es el doce de agosto. La fiesta es el sábado.
Saying when something happens
el lunes is one particular Monday, the one coming up. los lunes is every Monday, a habit. en mayo is in May, and a year takes en too: en 2024, read out as dos mil veinticuatro. Close to today you have hoy, ayer, anteayer (the day before yesterday — antier in Mexico and much of Central America), mañana, pasado mañana and anoche (last night). Watch mañana: it is both 'tomorrow' and 'morning', and what separates them is the en la in front — mañana voy al mercado is tomorrow, en la mañana voy al mercado is in the morning. Reaching further out: la semana pasada, el mes pasado, el próximo lunes, el próximo año.
The four seasons, and the half of the map where they flip
la primavera, el verano, el otoño, el invierno — the four estaciones, each one used with en: en verano, en invierno. Now the part a European course will not tell you. South of the equator the calendar runs the other way round. In Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, diciembre, enero and febrero are verano — Christmas at the beach, school holidays in January — while junio, julio and agosto are invierno. Closer to the equator, in Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and most of Central America, the four seasons barely apply at all: the year is divided into la temporada de lluvias and la temporada seca. So en agosto hace frío is simply true in Santiago and simply false in Cartagena, and the difference is where you are standing, not which word you chose.
tiempo: time and weather
tiempo carries two loads at once. No tengo tiempo is 'I don't have time'. Hace buen tiempo is 'the weather is nice'. For the weather sense, el clima is just as common across Latin America — ¿Cómo está el clima? is what you will actually be asked. Either way the weather sentences run on hacer, literally 'it makes cold': hace frío, hace calor, hace buen tiempo. Two to keep by heart: En invierno hace frío. En verano hace calor.
Coming to the party
venir is how you get invited to anything, and its five rows are worth saying out loud: yo vengo, tú vienes, él viene, nosotros venimos, ustedes vienen. That last row covers ellos as well — one single form for your cousins, your classmates and your grandparents alike, which is why plural 'you' is never a decision here. ¿Vienes a la fiesta el sábado? ¿Ustedes vienen el domingo? Two words that live in these same sentences: siempre, which sits in front of the verb (Siempre vengo temprano), and caminar, the everyday verb for going somewhere on foot — caminamos al mercado — a plain -ar verb with nothing irregular in it.
