Date

In Vietnamese, dates follow the small-to-big order day–month–year, similar to British English.

Basic usage

The units of time for dates are:

• ngày: day
• tháng: month
• năm: year

Structure

Place a number after each word, combined with the small-to-big order, to specify the date:

Different from English, the numbers used to express dates must be cardinal instead of ordinal. However, there is one exception: “April” is tháng Tư, not tháng Bốn.

Examples

Mồng with “small” days

In spoken Vietnamese, mồng usually goes with the first ten days of a month, all of which are, coincidentally or not, monosyllabic.

Structure

Insert mồng between ngày and the number (the “name”) of the day.

In this structure, ngày can be omitted (more often than not) without a change in meaning.

Examples

Usage note

In formal and written Vietnamese, generally, only ngày is used, not mồng. However, there are contexts, usually culture-related, where mồng must be used. For example, the Tết holiday, the biggest and most important holiday in Vietnamese culture, is such an occasion: mồng 1 Tết. An expression like ngày 1 Tết sounds very unnatural.

Extended usage

The word for “Common Era” (“Anno Domini”) is công nguyên. Hence, “Before Common Era” is trước công nguyên.

Structure

Place công nguyên or trước công nguyên after the date.

In written Vietnamese, they are usually abbreviated as CN and TCN, similar to “CE” and “BCE” in English.

Examples