Tutorial: La fecha

View the presentation and jot down some observations you make about the date in Spanish.

Select the play button to begin the tutorial, and then use the navigation buttons to pause/stop, continue, or reset the tutorial. View the presentation as often as you would like, and take notes as you follow along. Be sure to set your volume at a reasonable level before you begin.

When we write the date in English, we say something like: It's April 30th. In Spanish, the construction is slightly different. Observe the differences.

In each of these example sentences, you can see that the month is in a different place. Just as in official diplomas and certificates in English, the date in Spanish is actually written with the number of the day, then the month. "It's the thirty of April" is what it would literally say in English.

Another difference is that in English, we use what we call the ordinal number (first, second, tenth, etc.) instead of the cardinal number (one, two, ten). In Spanish, the cardinal number (one, two, ten) is used instead of the ordinal number in every case except for the first. To say "It is June first", we say "Es el primero de junio"...this is the case with the first of any month.

Es el primero de febrero.
Es el primero de marzo.

Another difference having to do with dates is that in English, we generally write April 30, 4/30. In Spanish, this is reversed--30/4 (thirtieth day of fourth month).