Your #1 Guide to the Months of the Year in Italian

When is your birthday?, asks your new Italian friend.

And you immediately start sweating, because among all the greetings (ciao!) and requests you need to know as a tourist (mi fa un caffè, per favore?), you forgot to learn a very important thing: how to say the months in Italian.

But do not worry. In this lesson, you’ll learn all about i mesi dell’anno, the months of the year, including their pronunciation, so you’ll never experience an uncomfortable silence. Let’s get started!

What are the 12 months in Italian?

Italian and English have many words that come from Latin. This means that many words sound similar, and the months of the year are no exception.

Gennaio	January
Febbraio	February
Marzo	March
Aprile	April
Maggio	May
Giugno	June
Luglio	July
Agosto	August
Settembre	September
Ottobre	October
Novembre	November
Dicembre	December

Things to look out for

You can’t tell from the previous table because we haven’t made any example sentences yet, but unlike English months, the months in Italian are NOT capitalized. For example:

• Sono nato il 6 gennaio.
  I was born on January 6.
• Il 3 aprile devo andare dal dentista.
  I have to go to the dentist on April 3.

The same goes for the Italian days of the week.

How do you pronounce the months in Italian?

In the table below, you can see how we pronounce each Italian month as a native English speaker (note that this is an approximate pronunciation) and in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

Jen-nah-yo	/dʒenˈnaːjo/
Fehb-bra-yo	/febˈbraːjo/
Mar-tsoh	/ˈmartso/
Ah-pree-leh	/aˈpriːle/
Maj-jo	/ˈmaddʒo/
Joon-yo	/ˈdʒuɲɲo/
Lool-yo	/ˈluʎʎo/
Ah-goh-stoh	/aˈɡosto/
Seht-tem-breh	/setˈtɛmbre/
Oht-toh-breh	/otˈtoːbre/
Noh-vem-breh	/noˈvɛmbre/
Dee-chem-breh	/diˈtʃɛmbre/

How to remember the months in Italian?

Sing out loud

There’s nothing like a catchy song to help you remember new Italian words. Sing along as you clean the kitchen or dust the living room! And when the song is over, sing it again, because repetition is the key to remembering words.

Use flashcards

There are popular flashcard apps on the web, such as Anki and Deckademy, but since you only have 12 words to learn, you may want to cut some squares out of a piece of cardboard or thick paper.

Write the month in English on one side and the translation into Italian on the other. Keep the little stack of flashcards on your nightstand and review it every time you go to sleep. It only takes a minute, and you will learn the months in Italian in no time!

Practice with Clozemaster

Clozemaster tests you with cloze exercises of increasing difficulty, using a special spaced repetition system that keeps track of the Italian words you are having trouble learning and those you are remembering more easily, prompting you with more of the former until they stick.

It’s a great tool for memorization and it’s also free to use. Best of all, it uses full sentences, giving you context for every word you learn (and context is essential in Italian, given how adjectives and nouns can change form depending on whether they’re masculine, feminine, singular or plural!).

Buy an Italian calendar online

This way, you will not only learn the Italian months, but also the Italian days of the week. And if you want to take things up a notch, make sure you write down all your appointments in Italian from now on.

You can also buy a portable Italian diary to keep in your purse or pocket. You will be forced to think in Italian, which is the perfect strategy to learn new words faster!

How do you use the months in Italian?

Italian months are all masculine, but articles are almost never used. However, prepositions are used in front of them to translate expressions like “until February” or “in August”. Let’s see how to use them.

Events that occur in a given month use the preposition a. Examples

• Compio gli anni a ottobre.
  My birthday is in October.
• La scuola inizierà a settembre.
  School will start in September.
• È nevicato sei volte a gennaio.
  It snowed six times in January.
• A luglio partiremo per la Sardegna.
  We will leave for Sardinia in July.

Use ad for months that begin with a vowel, aprile and agosto. All the others use a.

Less frequently, and in the same contexts, you can use the preposition in. See examples:

• Non c’è scuola in agosto.
  There is no school in August.
• Comincia a fare freddo in novembre.
  It starts to get cold in November.
• In giugno voglio cominciare a dipingere la stalla.
  In June I want to start painting the barn.

In these two structures, articles are never used.

There is a third, more formal way to say “in + month”: nel mese di…, which literally means “in the month of”. This is even less common, and you will only find it in formal writing, such as legal documents. Examples:

• Il consiglio di amministrazione si riunirà nel mese di marzo.
  The Board will meet in March.
• L’azienda è stata fondata nel mese di maggio.
  The company was established in May.

You can also use this structure to translate “in the first week of + month”, “in the second half of + month”, etc. Example:

• Le more maturano nella seconda metà di agosto.
  Blackberries ripen in the second half of August.
• Il festival si tiene nella prima settimana di luglio.
  The festival takes place in the first week of July.

How do you say “from… to…”?

For events that don’t take place in a specific month, but span several months, such as “from January to July,” use da… a…. For example:

• Il museo è aperto al pubblico da ottobre a dicembre.
  The museum is open to the public from October to December.
• La mostra d’arte si tiene da agosto a settembre.
  The art exhibition takes place from August to September.

To say “since + month”, just use da:

• Da aprile in poi potremo giocare fuori.
  We will be able to play outside starting in April.
• Lavoro alla Fiat da gennaio.
  I have been working at Fiat since January.

How to write dates using months in Italian

This is where the articles come in handy. You need one when you want to say a specific date. To write a date in Italian, start with il, “the”. Then use a cardinal number (1, 2, 3…) followed by the name of the month in Italian. Like this:

• Il 28 aprile
  (On) April 28
• Il 15 agosto
  (On) August 15
• Il 3 dicembre
  (On) December 3

We don’t really use ordinal numbers like English does, but the number 1 is kind of an exception: it uses the ordinal number primo, “first”. Examples:

• Ho appuntamento dal parrucchiere il primo aprile.
  I have a hairdressing appointment on April 1.
• Il primo agosto andrò in ferie.
  I am going on vacation on August 1.

All other numbers use cardinals, even numbers ending in one like “twenty-first”.

You don’t need to use an article when specifying a day of the week. Unlike English, you don’t need commas. See examples:

• Il volo di mercoledì 21 ottobre è stato cancellato.
  The Wednesday, October 21 flight has been cancelled.
• La partita sarà lunedì 7 febbraio.
  The match is scheduled for Monday, February 7.

Other expressions using the months in Italian

It’s also useful to learn how to translate expressions such as “this month” or “next month”. Mese, the Italian word for month, is a masculine noun. It behaves slightly differently in Italian, as you can see in the table below.

questo mese	this month
ogni mese / tutti i mesi	every month
il mese prossimo	next month
il mese scorso	last month
prima di…	before + month
dopo…	after + month

You can also say il prossimo mese and lo scorso mese.

Examples:

• Il mese prossimo andremo a sciare.
  Next month we will go skiing.
• Lavo la macchina tutti i mesi.
  I wash the car every month.
• Questo mese dobbiamo svuotare l’armadio.
  This month we have to empty the closet.
• Lo scorso mese siamo stati a Venezia.
  Last month we were in Venice.
• Dobbiamo finire il lavoro prima di agosto.
  We have to finish the work before August.
• Che mese viene dopo giugno?
  What month comes after June?

Holidays and celebrations throughout the year

You may need to know the names of popular holidays in Italian. Here are the most common ones:

• Capodanno (New Year’s Day), January 1
• San Valentino (Valentine’s Day), February 14
• Pasqua (Easter)
• Festa del lavoro (Labor Day), May 1
• Festa della Repubblica (Republic Day), June 2
• Ferragosto (Assumption Day), August 15
• Ognissanti (All Saints’ Day), November 1
• Natale (Christmas), December 25

If you can’t get enough of the holidays, learn how to wish a Merry Christmas in Italian here!

How to say the four seasons in Italian

When learning the months in Italian, it can also be useful to know the names of the seasons, since there are only 4 new words to learn. The seasons in Italian are as follows:

• l’estate (summer)
• l’autunno (fall, autumn)
• l’inverno (winter)
• la primavera (spring)

Estate and primavera are feminine, while autunno and inverno are masculine. Examples:

• L’inverno è la mia stagione preferita.
  Winter is my favorite season.
• Gli uccellini attendono l’arrivo della primavera.
  Birds are waiting for spring to arrive.
• L’estate è la stagione più calda dell’anno.
  Summer is the hottest season of the year.

If you are talking about events that take place in a certain season, don’t use an article, but add the preposition in, similar to the months in Italian. Examples:

• Le foglie cadono in autunno.
  Leaves fall in the autumn.
• Molte piante fioriscono in primavera.
  Many plants bloom in the spring.
• In inverno nevica spesso.
  It snows often in winter.

How many days are in… December?

There’s a catchy nursery rhyme in Italian that goes,

Trenta giorni ha novembre
con aprile, giugno e settembre
di ventotto ce n’è uno
tutti gli altri ne han trentuno!

Which is the Italian translation for “Thirty Days Hath September” and literally means:

Thirty days has November
with April, June and September
with twenty-eight days there’s one
all the others have thirty-one!

This is a popular nursery rhyme that teaches children how many days there are in a year: November, April, June, and September each have 30 days, February is the only month with 28 days, and all the other months have 31 days!

The months in Italian: Final thoughts

Let’s recap the months in Italian: gennaio, febbraio, marzo, aprile, maggio, giugno, luglio, agosto, settembre, ottobre, novembre and dicembre.

Pay special attention to spelling: You may be tempted to pay less attention to how the Italian months are written because they sound so similar to their English counterparts. Don’t do this, because their similarity is tricky and actually a source of confusion.

Keep reviewing them, and you will be able to use them in your sentences in no time!