How to Say "The Days of the Week" in Japanese

曜日

The phrase for "the days of the week" in Japanese is 曜日.

曜日 is used to refer to the days of the week. If you want to ask "What day of the week is it?", you can use the phrase 何曜日.

What does it mean word for word?

The word 曜日 is composed of 曜 (celestial body/light) and 日 (day).

Because the days are tied to elements, certain days are traditionally associated with specific colors. For example, Sunday is associated with red and Monday is associated with white.
The days for Tuesday 火曜日 and Saturday 土曜日 refer to 'fire' and 'earth' respectively. This links the planets to the ancient Oriental philosophy of the five elements.
The word 曜日 is a back-formation. It was created by extracting the common elements from the full names of the days like 月曜日 and 火曜日.

フランス語を習い始めてもう３年なんだけど、未だに曜日すら覚えてないんだよね。
I've been learning French for three years, and I still haven't even memorized the days of the week.
This sentence shows how to use 曜日 when discussing the difficulty of memorizing them.
Tatoeba #10123559 by small_snow, translation #10123550 by DJ_Saidez
今日は土曜日ですか？
Is today Saturday?
毎週、月曜日から金曜日まで仕事です。
maishū, getsuyōbi kara kin'yōbi made shigoto desu.
I work every week from Monday to Friday.
このアプリは曜日を教えてくれます。
kono apuri wa yōbi o oshiete kuremasu.
This app tells me the days of the week.

Misaki and Kenta are planning a meeting.

美咲 Misaki

来週の曜日はいつがいい？
Raishuu no youbi wa itsu ga ii?
Which day of the week next week works for you?
健太 Kenta

水曜日なら空いているよ。
Suiyoubi nara aite iru yo.
I'm free on Wednesday.
美咲 Misaki

じゃあ、水曜日にしましょう。
Jaa, suiyoubi ni shimashou.
Then, let's make it Wednesday.
健太 Kenta

了解。楽しみにしてるね。
Ryoukai. Tanoshimi ni shiteru ne.
Got it. I'm looking forward to it.

Sources

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