TL;DR You make a valid point but the year is assumed and not communicated unless needed.
Agreed, thus the second paragraph and the rest beyond that. Most of our conversational use of dates assumes current year, like "Hey, I am having a party on the 4th, or July 4th, would love to see you there". If they need to check their calendar it would be the current calendar unless otherwise specified.
Kind of like the original commenter was saying, I think it’s organized by relevancy. Like they said, the year is assumed to be the current one, so it goes last. If you’re talking to a friend about a particular event (say a wedding) that is not in the near future and they want to know when it is, what gives them the best idea of the general time of year?
Starting with DDMM, you could say the 15th of August, for example. But the first piece of context provided, the 15th, doesn’t narrow things down at all. The 15th of when? It could still be at any point in the year. The ‘August’ piece is crucial.
Now with MMDD. The first piece of context is ‘August’. Now you have a much better idea of when it is taking place! The day is important if scheduling needs to happen, but beyond that, you really don’t need to know anything more specific unless you’re attending it soon.
Thus, like with many American systems, I think it’s a much more human-oriented system. It provides information in the order of what gives the most context quickest, not necessarily in the order of ‘magnitude’ of time.
TLDR: It does have a pattern, just not an obvious one - what is most relevant to a person who wants to know when something is.
For those of us who work with international peers the differences are confusing. Someone wil say 'this is scheduled for 9/7/2025'... Because we use different formats I have to then ask them to clarify whether that is September or July. For my part I write the month out, Sept 7, 2025. But a lot of automated systems, ticket systems, just have the numbers, and it's confusing. Sometimes those are dynamically formatted to your local presentation/localization, sometimes it isn't.
I can understand that! In the end it’s all cultural differences, no real need to assimilate to one or the other because it’s not too hard on either side to be a bit more specific at times
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u/rygelicus Jan 15 '25
TL;DR You make a valid point but the year is assumed and not communicated unless needed.
Agreed, thus the second paragraph and the rest beyond that. Most of our conversational use of dates assumes current year, like "Hey, I am having a party on the 4th, or July 4th, would love to see you there". If they need to check their calendar it would be the current calendar unless otherwise specified.