I can't seem to find a list of the traditional/special month names in Japanese.
(Not 十二月...)

Where can I find a list?
よろしく御願いします！

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_calendar

Wow, I missed Wikipedia?
Thanks Aijin!

I would lock this thread but I don't possess the ability to do so.

I've tried to memorize these on three separate occasions. But I always forget them because it's just not useful. I know a lot of Japanese people who can't remember them. I guess this falls into the "trivia" category of Japanese language information.

Unfortunately for me, this kind of minutia is the funnest thing to study.

Not bad that bad to remember, just takes time to learn a lot of reading. Just looked on that wiki, I could read a few no problem but the rest i'm like ummm... can't read!
I guess this type of info isn't really important,should be memorized for interest i guess

The days of the month are trivia? As schoolchildren, I think there was one lesson in which we were required to recite them. But I always messed up on 20 - hatsuka, because I learned the dates before I learned the word hatachi (20 years old), so I didn't have anything to connect it to, and it's surrounded by regular numbers.

I think I've forgotten most of them now though! (At least in terms of production, but if you told me a date, I'd probably recognize it.) But I nevertheless don't see how this is trivia. If someone tells me to meet them on kokonoka, I think it would be pretty important to know when that is! Even my parents regularly used this form when discussing dates with me, even though they were overall very careful to use "easy" Japanese with me.

Despite the title of the thread, the poster didn't mean dates, but rather the old names for the months like やよい and さつき.

I believe they mean knowing the names of the traditional months for the lunar calendar is trivia (things like 睦月) not knowing the modern words for the days of the month.

It is pretty much in the domain of trivia, I myself don't really remember them all. I can recognize them when I stumble across them in poetry and literature set in the ye olden days, but I can't produce them willingly.

師走 is easy to remember because December is the month when everyone is running around like mad trying to get their work done. I can name about 5 or 6 of the other months, but can't remember which numerical months they correspond to.

さつき is easy because of となりのトトロ (and also because さつき as a personal name written 五月 is not that rare even in real life).

[Katsuo]

I used mnemonics to help memorize the traditional month names a couple of years ago. Seems to have stuck, so here they are: (RTK keywords in italics.)

Jan. 睦月（むつき）Coldest month of the year, best time to cuddle up and get intimate with someone.
Feb. 如月（きさらぎ）Sounds like "kiss a raggy". In still cold February I kiss a homeless, raggy person, because they bear a likeness to someone I know.
Mar. 弥生（やよい）March is when winter ends and spring begins; more & more life springing up everywhere.
Apr. 卯月（うづき）The mad March hares in Britain all hop off to Japan, but don't arrive till April (it's a long way).
May. 皐月（さつき）This one (along with 師走) is fairly common, and as a result I picked it up without using a mnemonic. Mostly written in kana. RTK keyword for 皐 is lunar month, but I've only that kanji used for May.
Jun. 水無月（みなづき）The rainy season starts in June, but not immediately, in fact at the start it feel like a water-nothingness-month.
Jul. 文月（ふみづき）The rainy season is in full flow now, so all you can do is stay home and write letters (文).
Aug. 葉月（はづき）This is the leafiest month of the year because some will start to fall from next month.
Sep. 長月（ながつき）Waiting for the long, hot summer to finally end, this month seems to go on for ever, i.e. it's the long month.
Oct. 神無月（かんなづき）According to legend the gods from all over Japan meet up once a year in Shimane-ken. Shimane must be lively at that time, but for the rest of the country this is the gods-nothingness-month.
Nov. 霜月（しもつき）For many regions this is the month when frost first appears.
Dec. 師走（しわす）師 refers to teachers, and in December even these people are running round busy getting ready for the New Year. Usually written in kanji.

さつき and 師走 are the best known.

To help distinguish which months end in "~tsuki" and "~zuki" note how there is a symmetric pattern about 7-8 for the ~zuki reading, i.e. months 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11.

Of course the next thing to remember is that most of those month names used to refer to lunar calendar months, not the current system.

when you're done with the months you can move on to the 七十二候

tomorrow is the first day of 雷乃収声 (although the weather forecast doesn't agree...)

Katsuo,
Do you kiss hobos? Or do you just walk up to people who like people you know and kiss them?

如月: This month has the likeness of January. Furthermore, becasue of the snow, where I live, everyday has the same likeness.

I like the rest of your stories though.

Apparently for Japanese people 文月 is the hardest to remember...

I'd like it if the same thing happened to English month names.

I can never remember the month order or number, so numbering the months would make that much easier for me.

...or I could just spend a few minutes memorizing it by rote... hmmm....


January.... Feburary... uh......

I could never remember how many days there were in each month until I learned Japanese.

西向く士 = western facing samurai (think of Japan adopting western calendar)
に 2
し 4
む 6
く 9
士 (十一 is 11)

Those are the short months.


re: mnemonics for the lunar calendar month names. There are some easier ones if you just treat the lunar month as equivalent to the solar month. At least one of Katsuo's contradict reality though so it can be more likely to forget (February is actually the coldest month).

Here are mine:
1 睦月 People normally get intimate with their loved ones at new years
2 如月 This is also written as 衣更着, which literally translates to "wear more clothes", since February is the coldest month of the year
3 弥生 I just remember that the 弥生 period was from 300 bc to 300ad, which both start with 3
4 卯月 April fools.. Damn kids were always playing tricks on the rabbit in the commercials for Trix
5 皐月 The two girls in the Ghibli movie Totoro were Satsuki and May (yay Trivia)
6 水無月 Around June is when it finally stops snowing/raining in the town I went to university in
7 文月 Summer vacation is half over, so time to start hitting the books for summer assignments
8 葉月 pretty much the same as katsuo
9 長月 Back to school blues, september feels so long
10 神無月 Halloween is celebrated by godless heathens
11 霜月 pretty much the same as katsuo
12 師走 pretty much the same as katsuo

[Katsuo]

Jarvik7 Wrote:At least one of Katsuo's contradict reality though so it can be more likely to forget (February is actually the coldest month).

Japan Meterological Agency stats have January as the coldest month for most regions (e.g. figures for Tokyo). February is colder in a few places though, e.g. Niigata.