dates in vietnamese

In this lesson, we’d learn to say dates in Vietnamese, such as 12/09/2012.

This lesson would rely on our previous lesson on how to say days of the week in Vietnamese so
if you are not very confident yet, do take a quick review that lesson before continuing with this lesson.

Saying Month in Vietnamese

The Vietnamese word for month is tháng.

And similar to the way we say days of the week, months are also numbered from 1 to 12 with
January assigned number 1, February: 2 and so on till December: 12.

As can be seen from the above table, there are only 2 notes to take.
The first one is about January, which some people, usually the older generations,
call tháng giêng.
Saying tháng một for January is perfectly fine.

The other small note is about April: which can said tháng bốn or tháng tư.
This is not really an exception because the number 4 in Vietnamese can be referred to as
bốn or, less commonly these days, tư.

Saying Day of the month

To say the 23th of a month in Vietnamese: simply use the wordy for day, which is ngày, + [number]

Saying Year in Vietnamese

The word for year in Vietnamese is năm.
So to say 2012: năm 2012

Saying Date in Vietnamese

Having learned how to say day of the month, month and year,
you’re now completely ready to say dates in Vietnamese.

How do we say 12/09/2012 in English?
Well, before we can say it, we need to know what it means by writing “12/09/2012”.

It seems that in Britain or Australia, “12/09/2012” refers to September, 9th, 2012 while
in America this would refer to December, 09th, 2012.
In Vietnamese, we’ll interpret a date using the format: dd/mm/yy(yy), the same as the British/Australian way.

While we can say interchangeably the twelveth of September, 2012 or September, the twelveth, 2012 in English,
in Vietnamese it’s almost always said in the order of [day of the month], [month], [year]

Let’s doing some exercises.
How do you say “12/09/2012” in spoken form?
It’s ngày mười hai tháng chín năm hai nghìn không trăm mười hai.
The table below shows you the details.

If you need to review how to say numbers in Vietnamese,
the automatic Vietnamese number speller is always there to help.

How about “Wednesday, 04/July/2012”? It’s thứ tư ngày bốn tháng bảy năm 2012.

Summary

• To say month in Vietnamese: tháng + [a number from 1 – 12]
• To say day of the month: ngày + [a number from 1 – 31]
• To say date in Vietnamese: [day of the week] + [day of the month] + [month] + [year]