Learning the days of the week and months in Amharic is essential for making plans and scheduling appointments.

Ethiopia has its own unique calendar system with 13 distinct months.

This makes learning time and dates in Amharic a slightly different experience than in Western languages.

I’ll break down everything you need to know about the Amharic days, months, and related time words.

Days of the week in Amharic

In Ethiopia, the work week officially begins on Monday.

The names of the days are relatively short and easy to memorize.

There’s one important regional variation to note regarding Wednesday.

Wednesday is formally written as ረቡዕ (rebu’i).

However, in everyday spoken Amharic across the country, people simply say ሮብ (rob).

Here are the seven days of the week in Amharic.

The Ethiopian calendar system

You can’t learn the Amharic months without understanding the Ethiopian calendar.

Ethiopia uses the Ge’ez calendar, which is heavily tied to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

This calendar is roughly seven to eight years behind the standard Gregorian calendar used in most of the world.

The Ethiopian year consists of 13 months in total.

The first 12 months each have exactly 30 days.

The 13th month is a short transitional period of just five days.

During a leap year, this 13th month has six days.

Months of the year in Amharic

The Ethiopian New Year begins on September 11th (or September 12th in a leap year).

Because the calendars don’t align perfectly, an Amharic month will overlap with two Gregorian months.

Here are the 13 months of the year in Amharic and their approximate Gregorian equivalents.

Useful time words and phrases

To use these days and months in everyday conversation, you’ll need some basic vocabulary.

Here’s a list of common Amharic time words.

Here are a few practical examples of how to use these words in sentences.