How to Pronounce the Days of the Week in Chinese (Mandarin)

1. My Mandarin class meets every xingqi'er after lunch.
2. In China, many people visit family on xingqitian.
3. The office is always quietest on xingqisi.
4. We celebrate my grandmother's birthday every xingqiliu.
5. She starts her diet plan every xingqiyi without fail.

The Mandarin days of the week are one of the most logical systems in any major world language - once you can count from one to six, you already know five of the seven day names. The real challenge is not memorization but tones: the same pinyin syllables said with a different pitch pattern mean a different word entirely. This guide breaks down xīngqīyī through xīngqīliù, plus the two forms of Sunday, with Hanzi, pinyin, tone marks, IPA, and the exact pitch shape of each syllable.

The Seven Days of the Week in Mandarin Chinese

Here are all seven days with Hanzi, pinyin, tone-marked romanization, and a plain-English phonetic guide:

1. Monday - 星期一 (xīngqīyī) /ɕíŋtɕʰí í/: “SHING-chee-EE,” all three syllables in a level first tone. Literally “week one.”
2. Tuesday - 星期二 (xīngqī’èr) /ɕíŋtɕʰí àɚ/: “SHING-chee-AR,” with a falling fourth tone on “er.” Literally “week two.”
3. Wednesday - 星期三 (xīngqīsān) /ɕíŋtɕʰí sán/: “SHING-chee-SAHN,” level first tone throughout. Literally “week three.”
4. Thursday - 星期四 (xīngqīsì) /ɕíŋtɕʰí sɹ̩̀/: “SHING-chee-SUH,” with a sharp falling fourth tone. Literally “week four.”
5. Friday - 星期五 (xīngqīwǔ) /ɕíŋtɕʰí ù/: “SHING-chee-WOO,” with a dipping third tone that drops then rises. Literally “week five.”
6. Saturday - 星期六 (xīngqīliù) /ɕíŋtɕʰí ljôu/: “SHING-chee-LEE-oh,” with a falling fourth tone. Literally “week six.”
7. Sunday - 星期日 / 星期天 (xīngqīrì / xīngqītiān) /ɕíŋtɕʰí ʐɻ̀ / ɕíŋtɕʰí tʰjɛ́n/: “SHING-chee-RUH” (formal, written) or “SHING-chee-tee-EN” (spoken). Literally “week sun” or “week sky/day.”

Notice the pattern: all seven days start with 星期 (xīngqī), “week,” and Monday through Saturday simply attach the numbers 1 through 6. Only Sunday breaks the counting pattern - and understanding why reveals the whole system’s history.

Step-by-Step Guide to Mandarin Tones for the Days of the Week

Mandarin is a tonal language: the pitch shape of a syllable is as important as its consonants and vowels, and getting the tone wrong can turn one word into a completely different one. Four tones appear across the day names:

1. First tone (ā) - level and high
2. Marked with a flat macron, as in xīng, qī, yī, and sān. Keep your pitch high and completely flat, almost like holding a musical note. Do not let it drift up or down - English speakers often accidentally add a slight rise or fall because flat pitch is unusual outside of singing.
3. Third tone (ǎ) - dipping
4. Marked with a caron (a small v-shape), as in wǔ. Start mid, dip down low, then rise back up slightly - like the pitch contour of a surprised “huh?” in English. In natural speech this tone is often shortened to just the low dip without the final rise.
5. Fourth tone (à) - sharp falling
6. Marked with a grave accent, as in èr, sì, liù, and rì. Start high and drop sharply to low, like giving a firm one-word command such as “Stop!” or “No!” in English. This is usually the easiest tone for English speakers because English already uses a similar falling pitch for emphasis.

The word 星期 (xīngqī) itself is always level first tone on both syllables - “SHING-chee” with no pitch change - so once you can say that opening pair smoothly, you only need to attach one new tone per day.

Why Do the Chinese Days Sound the Way They Do?

Unlike English, French, or Portuguese, Chinese never had a native seven-day week rooted in ancient astronomy or religion. Traditional Chinese timekeeping was organized around the lunar calendar, the ten-day “xún,” and cycles of 60 days - not a seven-day pattern. The seven-day week arrived in China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, carried in by Western trade, Christian missionaries, and international calendars, alongside the broader modernization of the Chinese calendar system.

Because the week was a foreign import, Chinese named it with a newly coined term rather than borrowing existing day names: 星期 (xīngqī), literally “star period.” The character 星 (xīng) means “star,” and 期 (qī) means “period” or “cycle” - together evoking the idea of a fixed astronomical cycle, much like how English “week” ultimately traces to an old Germanic root for “turning” or “change.” Rather than naming each day individually, Chinese simply numbered the days within that cycle: “week-one,” “week-two,” and so on through “week-six.”

Sunday breaks the numbering because it was treated as the cycle’s anchor point rather than its seventh member. The formal written form, 星期日 (xīngqīrì), uses 日 (rì, “sun” or “day”), directly echoing the Western concept of “Sunday” as the sun’s day. The common spoken form, 星期天 (xīngqītiān), uses 天 (tiān, “sky” or “day”) instead, a softer, more colloquial substitute. A separate older system, 礼拜 (lǐbài, “worship”), followed the same numbering logic but was explicitly tied to the Christian week of religious observance introduced by missionaries - 礼拜天 (lǐbàitiān) for Sunday and 礼拜一 (lǐbàiyī) for Monday are still heard in some regions and among older speakers today.

Reading the Pinyin Tone Marks

Pinyin, the standard romanization of Mandarin, places a small diacritic above the main vowel of every syllable to show its tone: a flat line (ā) for first tone, a rising accent (á) for second tone, a v-shaped caron (ǎ) for third tone, and a falling accent (à) for fourth tone. A syllable with no mark at all, like the final “de” in some grammar words, is unstressed and toneless - though none of the day names use this neutral tone.

These marks are not optional decoration - they are as essential to the word’s identity as any consonant. Reading xīngqī without registering that both syllables are level and high will produce a pronunciation that a native speaker may not recognize at all, even if every consonant and vowel is otherwise correct. Treat the tone mark as a required part of spelling the sound, not a footnote.

The Special Case of Sunday: 星期日 vs. 星期天

Sunday is the one day with two completely valid names, and knowing when to use each is useful, practical knowledge. 星期日 (xīngqīrì) is the more formal, written form - the one you will see on calendars, official documents, schedules, and news broadcasts. 星期天 (xīngqītiān) is the more common form in casual, spoken conversation - the one people actually say when making weekend plans with friends.

Both are pronounced with a fourth tone on the final syllable - rì falls sharply, and tiān, despite starting with a first-tone syllable earlier in some dialectal patterns, is standardly a first tone itself in this word, giving “tee-EN” a level high pitch rather than a fall. If you are unsure which to use, xīngqītiān is the safer default in spoken conversation, and xīngqīrì is the safer default in writing.

How the Chinese System Compares to Other Languages

Chinese is not alone in numbering its weekdays - Portuguese does the same thing, calling Monday “segunda-feira” (“second day”) because Sunday is treated as the unnumbered first day. Japanese, by contrast, kept the same planetary week Europe uses, naming its days after the sun, moon, fire, water, wood, metal, and earth, echoed in Chinese astrology but not in the modern Chinese day names themselves. Comparing systems like this is a useful memory trick: if you already know that Portuguese counts its weekdays, you already understand the logical shape of the Chinese system before learning a single Hanzi character.

What makes Chinese unusually easy to learn, relative to French or Portuguese, is that there is no irregular vocabulary to memorize at all - once you know the numbers one through six and the word for “week,” you have generated all six weekday names yourself. The only genuinely new information to learn is the tone that rides on top of each number, which is exactly why this guide treats tone as the central skill rather than a footnote.

Common Mistakes When Pronouncing the Chinese Days

These are the errors English speakers make most often:

1. Mistake 1 - Ignoring the tones entirely: Saying “shing-chee-san” with flat, English-style intonation instead of a genuine level first tone. The root cause is that English uses pitch for emotion and emphasis, not for word identity, so learners do not register tone as meaningful. The fix: practice each day’s tones as a fixed melody, not as optional expression.
2. Mistake 2 - Flattening the third tone in wǔ: Saying “woo” with a plain, level pitch instead of the dip-then-rise of a true third tone. The root cause is that the third tone has no close equivalent in English intonation. The fix: exaggerate the dip at first - go lower than feels natural - then let the small rise at the end happen automatically.
3. Mistake 3 - Mispronouncing the retroflex sounds in èr and rì: Saying “er” and “ree” with an English R instead of Mandarin’s retroflex approximant, made by curling the tongue tip back without touching the roof of the mouth. The root cause is transferring the English R directly. The fix: curl the tongue tip up and back, keep it floating in the air, and let the sound buzz gently rather than tapping anywhere.

Practice Tips

1. Master 星期 first: Every day name starts with the same level, high “SHING-chee.” Get this opening pair automatic before worrying about the number that follows.
2. Count with tones, not just numbers: Practice yī, èr, sān, sì, wǔ, liù as a tone drill on their own - level, falling, level, falling, dipping, falling - before attaching them to xīngqī.
3. Record and compare: Use the Pronounce Checker tool above to record each day and compare it to native audio. Tones are far easier to hear as wrong once you compare your own recording against a model back to back.
4. Use hand gestures for pitch: Trace each tone’s shape in the air with your hand as you say it - flat for first tone, a dip-and-rise for third, a sharp downward chop for fourth. Physical movement helps many learners internalize pitch faster than listening alone.
5. Related practice: Hear all seven spoken slowly on our days of the week in Chinese tool, then build your wider Mandarin sound system with the Chinese pronunciation practice page.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you say the days of the week in Chinese?

The seven days are xīngqīyī (Monday), xīngqī’èr (Tuesday), xīngqīsān (Wednesday), xīngqīsì (Thursday), xīngqīwǔ (Friday), xīngqīliù (Saturday), and xīngqīrì or xīngqītiān (Sunday). All start with 星期 (xīngqī, “week”) followed by a number, except Sunday.

Why does Sunday not use a number in Chinese?

Because the seven-day week is a modern import into Chinese, Sunday was treated as the anchor point of the cycle rather than its seventh numbered member. It uses 日 (rì, “sun”) in formal writing or 天 (tiān, “day”) in casual speech, rather than continuing the count to a seventh number.

What does 星期 (xīngqī) mean?

星期 (xīngqī) literally means “star period.” 星 (xīng) means “star,” and 期 (qī) means “period” or “cycle,” together referring to the fixed astronomical week that entered Chinese from the West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

How many syllables does xīngqīyī have, and where is the stress?

Xīngqīyī has 3 syllables: xīng-qī-yī. Mandarin does not use English-style stress; instead, each syllable carries its own level, high first tone, so all three syllables should sound equally weighted and equally high in pitch.

Quick Recap

1. The seven days are xīngqīyī, xīngqī’èr, xīngqīsān, xīngqīsì, xīngqīwǔ, xīngqīliù, and xīngqīrì / xīngqītiān.
2. Monday through Saturday are simply 星期 (week) plus the numbers one through six.
3. Tones are not optional - the level first tone, dipping third tone, and falling fourth tone all appear across the day names.
4. Sunday breaks the numbering pattern because the seven-day week was a modern import - it takes 日 (sun) or 天 (day) instead of a number.

Use the practice tool above to check your pronunciation of each day with real audio feedback. 加油 (jiāyóu) - keep practicing!