From Ancient China to Modern Holidays: Cultural Context of Months in Chinese

Business communications, new trends, and much more: China has changed the world over the past 20 years. What cultural features are the most interesting? Months in Chinese, music, or maybe food?

Communication with Chinese-speaking society is at a new and unknown stage. How do you congratulate people on the holidays? How do you schedule an appointment? Read more to memorize new words and phrases! 

Importance of Learning Chinese Months and Dates

Let's draw a parallel with your native language. How often do we use month names? Someone's birthday, an important date, a national holiday – it doesn't matter. These words surround us every day, and we are sure that the Chinese have the same experience. What can you do with it? 

• Delve into their culture. Leap years, lunar calendar, moon cycles – this is a new world of Chinese traditions! So much knowledge around a single topic – isn’t it exciting? 
• Communicate easier. Do you know how to say August in Chinese? Great! Now you can book your festival tickets or doctor's appointments and use new terms in business communications. 
• Diversify your vision. Why do Chinese people love doramas, hotpots, and spicy noodles so much? They discover new emotions through the experiences of other cultures. It’s cool that this has become possible in the new millennium because diversity can expand our horizons by 180 degrees.

The good news is that learning the Chinese months is easy. This knowledge is considered a basic level of language learning. Moreover, it's fun. How many fabulous holidays are there that you don't know about?

List of Chinese Months

Traditionally, the new year begins a full lunar cycle after the winter solstice, usually in early or mid-February. But how to say month in Chinese? Let's take a close look. 

• January: 一月 (yī yuè).
• February: 二月 (èr yuè).
• March: 三月 (sān yuè).
• April: 四月 (sì yuè).
• May: 五月 (wǔ yuè).
• June: 六月 (liù yuè).
• July: 七月 (qī yuè).
• August: 八月 (bā yuè).
• September: 九月 (jiǔ yuè).
• October: 十月 (shí yuè).
• November: 十一月 (shí yī yuè).
• December: 十二月 (shí èr yuè).

Notice the similarities between the hieroglyphs? This is one of the reasons why they are easy to learn: the word consists of the character for the month (月) and the number it goes under. The literal translation, for example, of January in Mandarin is “month number one.” This information is helpful for learning numbers and counting in Chinese. 

Pronunciation and Pinyin Guide

Pinyin has official status in China and Taiwan and is used as the official Latin transcription of characters. The recording of the months includes Chinese tones, which help to place intonations correctly. A little complicated, right? We have made this task a little easier by making an actual English transcription:

Chinese has five tones, which indicate how the sound is pronounced. The Chinese can make it shorter, longer, or louder. According to Chinese grammar and alphabet, tones are essential for pronunciation. Some words are spelled the same but differ only in tone. For example, mǎ (马) is a horse, and mā (妈) is a mother. 

Tips for Memorization

As we said, remembering the months is quite easy. All 12 characters look similar, and you just need to organize them. To do this, remember that the base word is the month 月 (yoo-eh). Then, learn Chinese numbers from 1 to 12. After that, match the number and date. Don’t forget to memorize the days of the week for additional knowledge! 

Let's try the example of July: it is translated as the seventh month, which means we need the number seven. We get 七 (qī) + 月 (yuè) = 七月 (qī yuè). The significant advantage of this approach is that it does not require useless memorization but involves logic.

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Using Chinese Months in Conversation

Knowing the months becomes useful when you are discussing holiday or summer plans. You can also talk about past events and historical facts, arrange meetings, and buy tickets. You may wonder if there are any grammatical features. Let's get more into context.

Common Phrases and Examples

Knowing months' names is not enough: we can’t speak with only one word in our vocabulary. Typically, we use “this month” or “the first Tuesday in March,” and so on. Let's look at a few examples:

• In six months: 六个月后 (liù gè yuè hòu)
• This month: 这个月 (zhè ge yuè)
• Last month: 上个月 (shàng ge yuè)
• Next month: 下个月 (xià ge yuè)
• Every month: 每个月 (měi ge yuè)
• Twice a month: 每月两次 (měi yuè liǎng cì)
• Every January: 每年一月 (měi nián yī yuè)
• Six months ago: 六个月前 (liù gè yuè qián)

How will these phrases help you? You will clarify things, initiate conversations with people you know, and expand your practice opportunities. These phrases are suitable for everyday communication with friends and official addresses.

Contextual Usage in Daily Life

Months are used in the context of describing past or future events. This is best reflected in books, stories, or songs. Therefore, we have selected several phrases from the famous works of singers and groups to show you how knowledge is applied in practice:

• “Wake me up when September Ends” (Green Day) – 当九月结束时叫醒我 (Dāng jiǔ yuè jiéshù shí jiào xǐng wǒ).
• “It was the fourth of July” (Fall Out Boys) – 那是七月四日 (Nà shì qī yuè sì rì).
• “And I go back to December all the time” (Taylor Swift) – 我总是回到十二月 (Wǒ zǒng shì huí dào shí'èr yuè).
• “Shawn Carter was born December 4th” (Jay-Z) – 肖恩·卡特出生于十二月四日 (Xiāo ēn Kǎ tè chūshēng yú shí'èr yuè sì rì).

We hope you had fun recognizing your favorite songs in these phrases while learning the name of December in Chinese and other months. We advise you to turn more to the media and creativity while learning new languages because the process of using new words is shown there quickly and transparently.

Understanding the Chinese Lunar Calendar

The moon controls the oceans and the tides. What about the ancient Chinese? The modern year is formed based on 12 lunar cycles, one for each month. This is also related to the planting and harvest cycles.

Differences from the Gregorian Calendar

We are accustomed to the fact that the Earth's revolution around the Sun is counted as one year: this is the main reference point of the classical calendar. What's interesting is that the Gregorian calendar is sequential. We always know that after one year, there will be a new one, exactly the same. The Chinese calendar forms a 60-year cycle, and every year has its own name in it.

Leap Years and Leap Months in Chinese Calendar

We are used to adding one day to February every four years. In China, however, everything is different since the months are counted by the New Moon. In this case, the year consists of an extra month in Chinese. This happens seven times during the 19-year cycle. We are interested in how company managers feel, tho :)

Cultural Context and Holidays

Many Chinese holidays have their origins deep in ancient history. Like many cultures, they are tied to planting and harvest days, the solstice, and the changing seasons. China also has names for the seasons: summer – 夏季 (xià tiān), autumn – 秋天 (qiū tiān), winter – 冬天 (dōng tiān), and spring – 春天 (chūn tiān). Let's find out more about their traditions.

Major Holidays and Festivals

The scale of celebrations of essential dates can amaze many people, as noisy events, fireworks, and parties accompany them. We have highlighted several enjoyable Chinese holidays and their names:

As you can see, many holidays are not tied to a specific date but depend on the lunar calendar. For example, there are many holidays in spring, but November in Chinese culture is not so popular. 

Historical Stories and Legends

Many modern Chinese traditions are seen in stories and idioms. The Chinese New Year celebration is related to the old Legend of Nian. According to it, Nian was a terrible beast that terrorized the settlement every New Year's Eve, forcing residents to hide in their homes.

On New Year's Eve, an old man visited the village. He said that the monster is afraid of lights, red ribbons, and burning reeds, and people need to decorate their houses with them. The inhabitants of the graying village listened to him, and that night, the beast did not harm the houses, so people carried that idea on. The tradition has survived to this day: the Chinese decorate their homes with lights and red ribbons.

Grammar and Linguistic Notes

Some countries use dates differently. For example, Europeans use the DD/MM/YY formula, while MM/DD/YY is spread in the USA, and YYYY/MM/DD is official in Canada. Are there such nuances in China? Let's find out.

Forming Dates in Chinese

The Chinese are accustomed to starting writing dates with the year. To do this, they use the following concepts: the year in Mandarin is 年 (nián), month – 月 (yuè) and day – 号 (hào). So, to form a date in Chinese, you need to start with the year, then write the month, and end with the day. For example, if we need to write down the 2010 National Day date, it will look like this: 2010/10/01. In informal communication, only the month in Chinese and day are used.

Learn More About Months with Promova

Innovative approaches allow you to learn Chinese on your own. The program developed by language professionals of the Promova language learning app will enable you to comprehensively cover all the language features with a guided course on your smartphone.

Use our Android or iOS app for your lessons: it helps you improve your levels in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. The program has a flexible and transparent learning system, so you can study whenever you feel like it! 

Our one-stop solution offers more than ten world languages, including Chinese, Korean, Spanish, and Arabic. For English, we have two extra approaches: Conversation club and 1x1 or group lessons with a tutor.

Conclusion

The months in China are straightforward to study because they have a logical basis for formation. Dive into the new field quickly and interestingly because this culture has fascinating traditions and features that are not similar to other languages. Try new approaches and words along the way!