Learn the Russian Days of the Week (Explanation + Simple Examples)

The Russian days of the week may seem quite scary. 

After all, they sound completely different than the English ones.

Also, if you want to say something simple as ‘’See you on Wednesday”, the word for Wednesday: среда changes to среду.

Don’t despair though. 

In this guide you’ll find all the words for the days of the week in Russian + examples how they change according to the function of the day in the sentence.

Ready? Поехали!

What are the days of the week in Russian?

Days of the week are completely different in English than in Russian.

That’s because Slavic languages have few words in common with English.

For example, in Dutch the word for monday is maandag. Almost the same, right?

In Russian, you’ll just have to learn each word by heart.

Here’s all the Russian days of the week in a table:

Which prepositions to use for the Russian days of the week?

Just knowing the words for the days of the week in Russian is not going to be enough to use them correctly in your speech.

No.

You cannot just say:

понедельник я иду на работу – monday I go to work

You also need to know the correct prepositions to use them.

The correct form here would be:

в понедельник я иду на работу.

There are different ways you can say the Russian days of the week.

• On monday I go to work.
• Every monday I go to work.
• From monday to friday I go to work.
• Until monday I have vacations.

And each of those prepositions uses a different case.

On Wednesday

If you want to say that you do something on a specific day, you use the Russian prepositions в. It literally means ‘to’. 

But in Russian you use it to say ‘on + day of the week’.

Another thing is that you use the accusative case here.

Since days of the week are inanimate, only the feminine days change their einding.

Also, you can sometimes use the preposition на, if you mean that a specific event or situation is planned for a specific day.

On Wednesday I go to the cinema with a friend – В среду хожу в кино с другом

встреча запланирована на пятницу – the meeting is planned for Friday

Here is how you apply this to each day of the week:

One interesting thing here is also with Tuesday. As you see, the preposition в changes to во. This is a general rule if the noun after starts with a в as well. This may seem difficult, but try speaking it out loud.

You find that you pronounce the о whether you want to or not 🙂

From Monday until Friday

When you want to say FROM a day until a day, you use the 2 prepositions:

• с
• до

Both require the genitive case. 

So “I work from Monday until Friday” in Russian would be:

я работаю с понедельника до пятницы

Here’s an overview of all the days of the week.

Until, including Tuesday

If you want to emphasize that the until day really includes that day as well, you can use the prepositions по. 

По requires the accusative case.

So it should be more correct to actually say:

я работаю с понедельника по пятницу

If you mean that you work from Monday to Friday (emphasize on including Friday).

Here’s an overview of how all the Russian days of the week change according to the dative case.

Every friday

If you want to say that you do something specific on EVERY Thursday, you still use the preposition по.

The only difference here is that the day should be in the plural form.

On Thursday I go to Russian classes – По четвергам хожу на уроки русского языка

Here’s an overview of the days of the week in Russian with по + dative plural.

Abbreviations and other helpful vocabulary

Above you can find everything you need to know about the days of the week in Russian. However, I’d like to take the opportunity here to give some additional information that will come in handy.

First, let’s take a look at all the abbreviations for the days. It’s probably obvious for most,  but it doesn’t harm to see them correctly once as well.

• Пн – Monday
• Вт – Tuesday
• Ср – Wednesday
• Чт – Thursday
• Пт – Friday
• Сб – Saturday
• Вс – Sunday

Apart from the days of the week, here’s is also a list of useful vocabulary when talking about time expressions.

Had any trouble with the days of the week? Let me know in the comments.

До понедельника!