Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[leslie]

Hi,

If a month is divided into 3 parts, what do I say in English for each part?
the first 10-day period of the month? (for the first part of the month)
in the middle of the month? (for the 2nd part of the month)
the third part of the month? (for the last part of the month)

If the above do not sound natural, what are the most natural way that a native English speaker will use? Could you please also put these expressions in sentence examples so I will understand the usage more clearly? Thanks very much for your help!! Have a nice weekend!!
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Less Is Blessed

[Mary W. Ng]

[redset]

This is another example of a cultural difference I think - there isn't really a definite way to say these things because we don't really ever divide months this way. We have 'a week' to mean 7 days, or 'a fortnight' to mean 14 days, but there's no special word for 10 days, or 9 days, or 8 days etc. I know the 10-day period is used in some asian countries, maybe a word has been coined for it - most English speakers wouldn't understand it though.

If you need to divide the month like this you can do what Mary said, or you could say 'the first ten days', 'the second ten days' and so on, or even specify dates: 'Between the 1st and the 10th of the month we sold 12 glasses of lemonade, but between the 11th and the 20th we managed to sell 15!'. And instead of saying 'the third third' (which might be a little awkward) you could say 'the last third', 'the final third', 'the latter third', something like that.