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Should I say either 'I am born on Tuesday' or 'I am born on a Tuesday'? Which one is correct?

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  • Some further context would help this question. In what context are you speaking or writing? Have you done any research, for example googling the phrase? What did you learn from this?
    – James K
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 8:31
  • english.stackexchange.com/questions/272809/…
    – user3395
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 8:33

2 Answers 2

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Many British native speakers would interpret "I was born on Tuesday" to mean "I was born last Tuesday", so "on a [day]" would avoid ambiguity.

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    British speakers may be precocious compared to Americans, but very few of us can speak that well after one week!
    – James K
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 8:25
  • @JamesK I agree, but I think there's some truth in this ell.stackexchange.com/a/79103/3395, and I would interpret it the same way, at least for a split second (I'm not a native speaker, though). Ha, there's a duplicate over on ELU: english.stackexchange.com/questions/272809/… (see the top-voted answer).
    – user3395
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 8:30
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    "on a Tuesday" would avoid ambiguity - one of many Tuesdays, as opposed to last week.
    – DoneWithThis.
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 8:31
  • Perhaps but actual usage tends to disagree. Both are possible with the version without the article being about twice as common. See the ngrams link in my answer. I also think you have made a typo in your answer and you mean " 'a' would avoid ambigutity".
    – James K
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 8:36
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    American usage also -- the new baby was born Thursday, but I was born (many years ago) on a Thursday.
    – arp
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 9:19
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Both are grammatically correct and either can be used, but should be in the past tense.

Google ngrams suggests that both are used.

Kwabena [is the] (soul-)name of a male born on a Tuesday.

Certainly one born on Tuesday could not do better than to unite with one born on Wednesday. Expect sparks to fly from this!

With a specific date, don't use "a":

He was born on Tuesday the 2nd March 1852

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    ngrams wouldn't differentiate between use-case. I'm worried that "Mr & Mrs Smith have a new baby boy, born on Tuesday" etc is going to skew the results.
    – DoneWithThis.
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 8:33
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    See the examples. Both are acceptable. You can use the searches at the bottom of the graph to confirm this.
    – James K
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 8:37
  • I'm still worried about skewed results. "He was born on Tuesday the 3rd March 1852" is going to be in a lot of those examples, compared to "He was born on a Tuesday in late December"
    – DoneWithThis.
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 8:50
  • That is a more reasonable objection. I shall edit. (except that the 3rd March 1852 was Wednesday.)
    – James K
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 8:53

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