How To Remember The Days Of The Week In Malay

Flag of Malaysia.

My family picked up a free for customers 2020 calendar produced by Suzuki in a garage in Singapore.


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The calendar has English, Malay and Mandarin.

Days of the week
English - Malay
Sunday - Ahad
Monday - Isnin
Tuesday - Selasa
Wednesday - Rabu
Thursday - Khamis
Friday - Jumaat
Saturday - Sabtu

How do you remember them? Firstly, let's sort out Saturday and Sunday.
Sabtu begins with an S and you might think it is Sabbath and Sunday. No, it is Saturday. Easier than you think. The Moslems celebrate on Friday, the Jews on Saturday and the Christians on Sunday.
So how do you remember Sabtu is like the Jewish Sabbath. Don't bother worrying about that. The simple way is to simply look at the letters. Saturday and Sabtu begin with the same two letters.

Malay- English
Ahad - Sunday - AH- A Day of rest, for most, Sunday. I/Ah had a good day of rest.
Isnin - Monday - iIS it Not n the office day, moNday. It's not monday, is it?
Selasa - Tuesday - Selasa SE in TuESday. SEcond day of the week. SElasa.
Rabu - Wednesday - RABU short four letters, remember it's half way, about midweek, you (U) only have two days to the weekend, Wednesday
Khamis - Thursday - Khamis with an h kHamis is tHursday. Coming to the end of the week. Hurray!
Jumaat - Friday - Jumaat - Jews celebrate Friday night, eve of Sabbath, and Moslems Are AT prayer All day.
Sabtu - Saturday - SA-btu is SA-turday

The memory aids are helpful even if they simply make you keep re-reading the list of the days of the week it until you remember them all.

Now let's look at them and see if you can remember the English from the Malay.

Sabtu - which day?
Ahad - which day?

Isnin - which day?
Selasa - which day?

Rabu - which day?
Khamis - which day?

Jumaat - which day?
Sabtu - which day?

Now, let's mix them up.
Isnin - ?
Jumaat - ?
Ahad - ?
Rabu - ?
Selasa - ?
Khamis - ?
Rabu - ?
Sabtu - ?

Now let's try them in a sentence. Will I see you Monday?
Isnin.

Useful Websites
Malaysia tourism
https://www.tourism.gov.my/

Malay/Indonesian languages
Duolingo.com


About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Teacher of English and other languages. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Learn Chinese Months and numbers one to twelve

Chinese months
The second symbol is the symbol for month. The first symbol is the sign of the number. The easiest ones to recognize are January, month one, single line. February, month two is a double line. Four is like the four sides of a window with curtains. April, curtains. June is the sixth month.

July is the seventh month, and the Chinese seven looks like an upside down English seven. August is the eighth month and instead of two circles making the eight you simply have two curved lines. September looks like the ltter r in Italic script. October is the tenth month, like a Roman number ten turning anticlockwise. November, is ten plus one, the eleventh month.
一月 one month (January)
二月two month (February)
游行
四月 four month (April - four sides of a square, like a window, with curtains)
可能
六月six month (June)
七月seven month (July - looks like an upside down European seven and a backwards J)
八月eight month (August like two circles written in a hurry)
九月
十月 ten month (October - looks like Roman ten turned sideways)
十一月 eleven month (November looks like Roman ten turned sideways plus one line = 11)
十二月 twelve month (December - looks like Roman ten turned sideways plus two lines = 12)

Chinese Pronunciation

One, two - yi, èr.

1 Yī yuè
2 èr yuè
3 yóuxíng
4 sì yuè
5 kěnéng
6 liù yuè
7 qī yuè
8 bā yuè
9 jiǔ yuè
10 shí yuè
11 shíyī yuè
12 shí'èr yuè

After looking at the simplified Chinese, I decided to try traditional Chinese to find out if it was more complicated and if I could recognize it.

1 一月
2 二月
3 遊行
4 四月
5 可能
6 六月
7 七月
8 八月
9 九月
10 十月
11 十一月
12 十二月

1 Yī yuè
2 èr yuè
3 yóuxíng
4 sì yuè
5 kěnéng
6 liù yuè
7 qī yuè
8 bā yuè
9 jiǔ yuè
10 shí yuè
11 shíyī yuè
12 shí'èr yuè

It comes out the same. So, no trouble reading the signs, including today's date displayed on the hotel TV or above Reception in the hotel or in a bank.

Japanese uses the same symbols.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.