Dates in Chinese
Chinese dates are very straightforward to learn, as long as you are familiar with basic chinese numbers.
Many things in Chinese are written and spoken with the most significant unit first and dates are no exception. This means that dates are stated in reverse order to English: Year, Month, Day
Years
The year is simply written as its component digits, eg. 9510二èr/two/2/ 21393零líng/remnant/zero/ 21393零líng/remnant/zero/ 826八bā/eight/8/ followed by the year character, nian2:
Months
The character for month is yue4:
The twelve calendar months are prepended with a number, much in the same way as days of the week are appended.
9585二月èr yuè/February/second month/ èr yuè (February)
28620三月sān yuè/March/third month/ sān yuè (March)
31533四月sì yuè/April/fourth month/ sì yuè (April)
35264五月wǔ yuè/May/fifth month/ wǔ yuè (May)
21684六月liù yuè/June/sixth month/ liù yuè (June)
26195七月qī yuè/July/seventh month/ qī yuè (July)
994八月bā yuè/eighth month/August/ bā yuè (August)
18244九月jiǔ yuè/ninth month/September/ jiǔ yuè (September)
30216十月shí yuè/October/ shí yuè (October)
30200十一月shí yī yuè/eleventh month/November/ shí yī yuè (November)
30047十二月shí èr yuè/December/twelfth month/ shí èr yuè (December)
Days
When stating a day as part of a month (rather than counting a number of days), you simply suffix the hao4 character after the day number:
Dates in full
Some example dates, remember they should be in the order Year, Month, Day. As in English, you can omit the year or month if you are talking about the current year/month.
9510二èr/two/2/ 21393零líng/remnant/zero/ 21393零líng/remnant/zero/ 35127五wǔ/five/5/ 24656年nián/year/ 30047十二月shí èr yuè/December/twelfth month/ 9569二十五èr shí wǔ/twenty five/ 13640号háo/roar/cry/
(2005, December twenty-fifth)
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