VocabularyJLPT N5 · core

月曜日

げつようび

hepburn getsuyoubi

Monday

Part of speech · noun

Pattern visualization

月moon

日sun

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Examples

月曜日は仕事です。
Monday is a workday.
月曜の朝は忙しい。
Monday mornings are busy.

Collocations

月曜日 (getsuyoubi, Monday)月曜 (getsuyou, Mon abbreviated)週初め (shuuhajime, start of week)休み明け (yasumi ake, post-holiday)仕事始め (shigoto hajime, work start)

Mnemonic

Getsuyoubi (月曜日) is Monday — 月 (moon, the celestial body and lunar element) + 曜 (shining heavenly body) + 日 (day). The Japanese day-of-week system descends from the Chinese shichi-you (Seven Celestial Bodies = sun + moon + Five Elements fire, water, wood, metal, earth) and was paired with the Western seven-day week after Meijis 1876 calendar adoption. The kanji matrix: 日 sun = Sunday, 月 moon = Monday, 火 fire = Tuesday, 水 water = Wednesday, 木 wood = Thursday, 金 metal = Friday, 土 earth = Saturday — straight Five-Elements mapping plus sun and moon. Japanese registers split: getsuyoubi (full), getsuyou (abbreviated), Mon (English casual) — business emails use the full form, conversation uses the short one. The loanword buruu mandee (Blue Monday) covers Monday blues, and Japan has its own getsuyou-byou. The unique Sazae-san shoukougun (Sazae-san syndrome) names the Sunday-evening dread peaking at the 6:30 PM national-anime broadcast just before Monday — distinctively Japanese social-psychological vocabulary. Korean uses the identical kanji woryoil; Chinese xingqi-yi (numbered days) breaks from the celestial-body system.

Quick check

Meaning of Sazae-san shoukougun?