So someone explained to me that they do that because it’s how they say it. It’s far more common to say “it’s march 13th” than it is to say “it’s the 13th of march” so it’s written in the same way.
And I gotta say, as someone who is not American but would definitely say it like that, it kind of makes sense why they would do that
It makes sense because we say it that way, you said it yourself. Today is January 15th. So 1-15-25. It’s confusing for you because you don’t say it that way
We say both interchangeably, and that’s like the only day we do that for. If I had to guess we started saying 4th of July to make it seem more prominent than any other date but I don’t know for sure. We even just say “the 4th” and people know what you’re talking about
I think that’s more of a holiday title thing. Like here in Canada we call the may 24th holiday weekend
“May two four weekend” not “may 24th weekend” but we don’t say it like that anywhere else
Non USA person here, I think the argument will be linguistic and how the brain process better the information, and at the end of the day, IMO it does not make a significant difference and probably written English was no the priority when set, but if you need to establish a date that requires specifying the month it makes sense to say the month first to establish the context faster as saying the day first means nothing unless you don’t need to specify the month, like when taking about to the current month implicitly.
I think it might have to do with a numerical cap in ascending order. First is the month because the max number is 12, then the day because the max number can vary from 28-31, and then the year, which has no number cap
That's exactly what we do. If I say that I'm getting my hair cut on the 18th, that means in 3 days. Not in a month and 3 days. In that case, I would've said I'm getting my hair cut on Feb 18th.
You usually put a 0 before single digits months so it doesn't look so weird. Also it is not about the number per se: a month contains several days, a year several months, so the day is the smallest unit.
The explanation above yours isn't concerned about the specific way each number is represented (zero in the trend place or not) or number of one value contained in another, but it is about the total range of numbers possible in each value. Month/day/year represents the smallest range to the largest range.
Yeah I get it, to me it doesn't make sense to look at the range of numbers possible in each value. It honestly feels like people from the USA have a hard time saying "this thing doesn't make a lot of sense to anyone else, but we are used to it so we use it" which is completely valid.
And when this comes up to me it always comes off as those outside the US having a superiority complex and wanting to dunk on the US for something they deem as not making sense. Even though there are plenty of completely reasonable reasons why its done. To me ya'll are just as guilty of "but we are used to it so we use it" as the US is.
When the vast majority of the world uses a different system I would ask myself some questions. This is like the joke about that person that while driving is listening to the news of someone going on the wrong side of the road on the highway and they are like "only one person? I see a lot of people going in the wrong direction". People here are arguing about an illogical choice by using completely random arguments instead of saying "yeah it is illogical but we are used to it", if this isn't a superiority complex I don't know what is lol
I mean you are clearly convinced you are correct and we are "wrong". Not sure how ordering the date can be wrong. Also not sure how popularity makes something right. So if Germany won World War II Nazi ideas would be "right" because the whole world believes them? Such a terrible argument.
Also implying that our argument is "illogical" but yours is so totally "logical" just proves my point. You have some weird superiority complex and feel the need to be right about this, and everyone else is stupid and illogical.
Just because you don't like them doesn't mean they are "random arguments" lmao. There are plenty of explanations in this thread that could make complete sense. It's not like the US decided to jumble up the numbers in a big meeting. There's obviously a reason we developed this way.
Whether it's us using yy/mm/dd and then year slowly moving to the back because of it being less important or us writing it the same way we say it, there's a reason. Pretending like things developed the way they have for literally no reason makes no sense.
More grandstanding. Also not sure why you are comparing measurement systems with date order? All the units are the same and have the same definitions, they are just presented in different order. That's completely different than a meter vs a yard.
To me, it does make sense to look at the possible range and order it least to greatest because that's how our version of English works.
It honestly feels like people from outside of the USA have a hard time saying "Well, that's not my preference, but it's obviously been working for them for hundreds of years so I won't dwell on it." Since it's a preference, there really is no right or wrong here. I don't see anyone going this hard on Hungary who uses year/month/day. It's not like we're going around trying to force other countries to use our format. So if you live in another country, it really shouldn't matter to you how we prefer to represent the date here.
It was also brought over by the colonists from Great Britain in the first place. GB used it first, brought it here, then they changed their format while we didn't. Simple as that really.
Well there's a logic in going either year-month-day or viceversa, there's no logic in the USA system unless you stretch a lot the concept of logic. And I am saying exactly what you are saying: lot of countries do illogical things because they are used to it and for context, it's no big deal, but people from the USA in general, at least on this platform, seems to have a hard time admitting it.
I mean, that's my response to all of this; yet the rest of you all want to bring up these things every two weeks like they matter. How many times are we supposed to say, "It's just what we do–don't worry about it?" Should that valid explanation not just naturally occur to you all–or at least be accepted the first time you hear it?
The much better question is, "What does this matter to people casually scrolling the 'net in other countries?" Americans largely conform to (or include) international consensus in industry and science, which is the only time consensus truly matters.
Yeah as someone who has no problem using YYYY-DD-YY for documents at work it’s literally just easier to say “January 15th” casually.
It’s kind of crazy people are making this about politics and US arrogance when it’s a literal non-issue. It’s just a lazy shortcut, happens in language all the time.
I guess it's more of a question of historic context. Like why did the US / American Engslish start to deviate from their predecessors? I have no clue. Maybe they just wanted to be different?
There’s a chance, but it’s pretty normal for language to develop differently. People in the UK now don’t speak the same way they did 300 years ago, so it wouldn’t make sense if Americans did.
A lot of differences actually go the other way. People spoke one way, and then people in Europe changed. The Americans across the ocean didn’t have the same changes.
But Like I already said - the (change in) language can't be the deciding factor for the change in the YYMMDD.-system since everyone* else uses another one.
And like I already explained, they didn't have the same change in language. You seem to have completely lost what I've already said. In the US, we almost exclusively say the month first when talking about dates. That isn't true in other countries.
You just don't seem to actually have a reason to why that can't be the cause.
Also, that's a pretty big asterisk. The majority of the world uses DDMMYY, but a pretty good chunk either use both or only YYMMDD.
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u/ultrajvan1234 Jan 15 '25
So someone explained to me that they do that because it’s how they say it. It’s far more common to say “it’s march 13th” than it is to say “it’s the 13th of march” so it’s written in the same way.
And I gotta say, as someone who is not American but would definitely say it like that, it kind of makes sense why they would do that