Saying dates

Saying dates in English
We can say dates either with the day before the month, or the month before the day:

The first of January / January the first.

Remember to use ordinal numbers for dates.

(The first, the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the twenty-second, the thirty-first etc.)

For years up until 2000, separate the four numbers into two pairs of two:

1965 = nineteen sixty-five

1871 = eighteen seventy-one

1999 = nineteen ninety-nine

For this decade, you need to say “two thousand and —-” in British English:

2001 = two thousand and one

2009 = two thousand and nine