Learning how to talk about time, days, and months in Basque is an essential step in your language journey.

You need this vocabulary to schedule appointments, make travel plans, and chat about your daily routine.

Basque handles time a bit differently than English, but the rules are highly logical and easy to follow.

I’ll break down the numbers, the days of the week, and the months of the year so you can start using them immediately.

Telling time in Basque

To ask for the time in Standard Basque (Batua), you use a very specific phrase.

In some western regions like Biscay, you might also hear people ask the time using a different phrase.

When responding with the hour on the dot, you add the plural article -ak to the number, except for one o’clock.

One o’clock is singular in Basque, so we use the phrase ordu bata.

Because one o’clock is singular, you must use the singular verb da (is) when stating the time.

For all other hours, you use the plural verb dira (are).

Here’s an overview showing the hours of the day in Basque.

To say “half past”, you simply add eta erdi (and a half) to the hour.

To say “quarter past”, you add eta laurden (and a quarter) to the hour.

When saying “quarter to”, you use the word gutxi (less) to indicate the remaining time.

Days of the week in Basque

The Basque calendar week begins on Monday.

The first three days of the week share the root word aste, which translates to “week”.

Here are the standard days of the week in Basque.

Regional variations are very common for the days of the week across the Basque Country.

In the Biscayan dialect, you’ll frequently hear eguena for Thursday and barikua for Friday.

Many speakers in western regions also use zapatua for Saturday and domeka for Sunday.

Months of the year in Basque

The Basque months of the year are deeply connected to nature and traditional farming cycles.

For example, urtarrila (January) literally translates to “the month of the year”.

Here’s the standard list of the twelve months you need to memorize.

Useful time-related words

To fully talk about schedules, you’ll need a few extra vocabulary words in your toolkit.

These common nouns and adverbs will help you specify exactly when an event is taking place.

Practicing these words daily will help you commit them to memory quickly.

Try writing your daily schedule or calendar events in Basque to get comfortable with the spelling.