When is premier used instead of un?

French uses the ordinal premier only for the first of the month, so 01/06 is le premier juin. Every other day uses the plain cardinal number, for example le deux juin or le trente et un mai.

How are French years spelled?

Years are written as ordinary cardinal numbers. 2026 is deux mille vingt-six, where mille is invariable and never takes an s. The phrasing reads naturally as part of the date.

Why is there a hyphen in vingt-six but et in vingt et un?

Post-1990 spelling reform hyphenates compound numbers, but the conjunction et replaces the hyphen before un and onze for 21, 31, 41, 51, 61, and 71, as in vingt et un and trente et un.

Does French capitalise month names?

No. French month names are written in lower case, so juin, mai, and décembre are never capitalised mid-sentence unless they start a sentence. The tool keeps months lower case as is standard.

French Date in Words

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Writing a date in full French words is required on cheques, formal letters, and legal documents. French follows a specific rule that differs from English: the first of the month is an ordinal, but every other day is a plain cardinal number.

How it works

The phrase is built as le + day + month + year:

day:   1   → premier (ordinal, the only ordinal day)
       2–31 → cardinal: deux, trois … trente et un
month: 1–12 → janvier, février, mars … décembre (lower case)
year:  cardinal number, e.g. 2026 → deux mille vingt-six

Numbers 17–99 follow standard French construction: dix-sept, vingt et un, soixante-dix, quatre-vingts, quatre-vingt-dix-neuf. The conjunction et (without hyphens) appears in 21, 31, 41, 51, 61, and 71; all other compounds use hyphens.

Example and notes

01/06/2026 becomes le premier juin deux mille vingt-six, while 04/06/2026 becomes le quatre juin deux mille vingt-six. Note that mille is invariable and quatre-vingts only keeps its final s when it stands alone (eighty), losing it before another number as in quatre-vingt-un.