Names of months

Dutch names of months will not present any difficulties for English readers: Januari, Februari, Maart, April, Mei, Juni, Juli, Augustus, September, Oktober (in older documents usually October), November, December. Slight spelling changes do exist in older documents (in particular, the final -i of some months is often replaced by -ij or -y), but the months will still be recognizable, even if you don't speak Dutch. But there is a catch. Just as in English, the names of the last four months are based on a Latin numeral: septem (7), okto or octo (8), novem (9) and decem (10) - the numbers 7 to 10, for the 9th to 12th month. Sometimes september, october, november and december are abbreviated to 7^ber, 8^ber, 9^ber and 10^ber, or VII^ber, VIII^ber, IX^ber and X^ber. Watch out: 7 and VII mean July, 7^ber and VII^ber (or the genitive 7^bris and VII^bris) mean September! (And the -ber suffix is sometimes barely readable.)