Unité 1

cajun 101 - learn louisiana french at home

Leçon 4a - Quel jour est aujourd'hui?

Quel jour est aujourd'hui? Aujourd'hui c'est...
kel jur ay-t-ohjurd-wee? oh-jurd-wee say...

Which day is today? Today is...

In my son's classroom at school there is a large wall calendar. One of the activities each day is for a student to say what the day is and mark it on the calendar. This is a good practice for your home French classroom. If you don't have one of those wall calendars you can write on, then you could probably make one with some paper. Near the calendar I have hanging on the wall a list of the days of the week in French, the months of the year, and the numbers up to 31. This will help the young student to ask and answer questions about the day, date, and time. In today's lesson, we'll go over the basics.

The word quel is the masculine form of quelle which we introduced in the previous lesson. We use the masculine form because jour is masculine. The word âge is feminine, so it requires the feminine form of quelle. If you wanted to ask about the date, la date (in French), then you would also use quelle. Note that quel and quelle are pronounced the same way (kel).

Quelle est la date aujourd'hui? Aujourd'hui c'est le 31 de décembre.

Which is the date today? Today it is the 31st of December.

There are two things you should notice about saying and writing the date in French. The numbers are just plain numbers and not said in the cardinal version as in English. In English we say "the thirty-first", but in French we say "the thirty-one." Also, the names of months and days are not capitalized in French, all a written in lower case.

Now you probably want to know what the days of the week, the months, and the numbers up to 31 are in French. Here are some places that will help you with that: Le Français Cadien Par Themes which includes lists for les mois de l'année and les jours de la semaine. Here are two Quizlet sets for the numbers from 10-20 and 20-30. This Quizlet set will let you practice the days of the week. And this one has all the months of the year.

Now, do the Cajun 101 Quizlet set for this lesson.

Leçon 4b - Les jours de la semaine

Les jours de la semaine
lay joor d'lah s'men

The days of the week

In French, the article (le, la, les) must match the noun it modifies in gender and number. Les jours is plural, so the article le becomes les. Also the noun gets an "s" added just like in English. Our new word for this lesson is la semaine, meaning "the week" in English. The table below lists the French days of the week.

To practice the days of the week, use the Quizlet set.