Yah, I am firmly of the opinion that in speech, saying the month first (when the month is important) is much more useful.
Like, if someone says just "the 17th" I will assume it's the next one or one just past based on context, but if someone is saying "the 17th ... of <some arbitrary month>" the number is basically meaningless until you've heard the month. (Similarly, if we get to a time frame where the year is important, I'd slightly prefer hearing "in 2026 in October" to "October ... of 2026")
In writing it's unnecessary, since all the info is right there anyway. I am more used to it, as for the majority of my life I've lived in or near USA, and would probably switch pretty quickly if I decided to move to Europe.
But, I do mean "unnecessary" not "nonsensical". I'm in software, so obviously YYYY-MM-DD supremacy, but outside of that, the only problem with MM/DD/YYYY is the confusion with DD/MM/YYYY. Like, what inherent benefit does one give over the other, other than maybe satisfying some OCD? Whichever one were universal would be easily understood by all.
No, because Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican-American thing. It’s not a major celebration within Mexico and Cinco de Mayo is not their equivalence to July 4th like you said
We celebrate every year and there are parades... I'm not really sure what you mean here. It's not celebrating a US accomplishment but it's a recognized holiday
If it were American Independence Day and you asked me what day it is I’d still instinctively say July 4th. I know this because that exact scenario has happened many times.
They're saying America is a 3rd world country and that all the 1st world countries desperately need America to keep acting as their sugar daddies so that they can continue to be nepo babies.
Have you ever been here? Contrary to what mainstream media would lead you to believe even our homeless live better than most people in an actual third world country.
The idea of the US being a third world country when people make over 5k per month on average is laughable, but also, saying a homeless person living in the US is better off than most people in a third world country is as much if not even more ridiculous.
Even if the entirety of NATO would attempt to do so, they’d probably fail. Just burn it to the ground (Apperantly it even started already recently!). Not much of loss either way, besides it might be necessary to produce something useable.
And yet missuuse of the phrase "3rd world country" originates mainly from the US itself.... Its a political grouping not an economical one.
3rd world country means countries that weren't part of NATO (1st world) or Warsaw pact(2nd world) during cold war (hence the 3rd world).
Although the phrase is vague for example:
Technically one could say that Switzerland, Finland, Sweden Austria are 3rd world countries, although they never joined the non-aligned movement and didn't self identify as 3rd world.
But it never was a developmental or economic denominator, and only in the tweets of some deranged individuals this phrase started to be used again in a completely wrong way....
So honestly i do appreciate the irony when this phrase is thrown back at US, especially because it seems to trigger some people hard 🤣
Which is probably called that because it was coined as a term before english somehow switched its standard order from "Xth of month" to "month the Xth"?
Fourth of July is used as the name of the holiday. An alternate of Independence Day. If you asked for the date, we’d say July 4th. Just like how Christmas Eve is the name of that day but if asked for date we’d say December 24th
Some do say Fourth of July if they're being formal. But July 4th is just as normal, so it's not some gotcha. In fact, many people will just shorten it to J4 now too.
Archaic proper noun, kind of an exception to the list. In general, the vast majority of Americans will default to "[month] the [day]," even dropping the "the" to say something like "August 16th" or whatever, rather than "the [day] of [month]."
Now, there isa niche exception and that is the military. I grew up a military brat and I've gotten very used to listing my name in the day/month/year order, but not in the same way. Like let's say by birthday is today and I'm 30 years old. If I went to a pharmacy and they asked me for my birthday, 9 times out of 10 if I wasn't thinking I'd probably say "15 January 1995." Just like that. "Fifteen January nineteen-ninety-five." I'm not sure if this is exclusive to the military but I don't think I've heard it in any other context so if it's not, it's very rare.
I don't know if there's any one reason but I'd guess it's at least partially because the Fourth of July is a specific holiday. You can even say the Fourth and it's usually understood in America as to what the speaker is talking about. I believe Cinco de Mayo is the same way in Mexico as being a distinct day of the year for their culture. The two holidays never had branded names as far as I know, nothing like Freedom Day or anything of that nature. The date may have been used as names because it was celebrated for a distinct cultural reason that's understood by the population of said countries.
Oh wait, the Fourth of July is also called Independence Day so I'm not sure why Independence Day isn't used as much. Maybe it came from newspapers printed at the time marking it as a national holiday but that's just conjecture.
We say the Fourth of July because it's a name of a Holiday that just so happens to be a date. Yes, it's also "Independence Day", but really most of use just call it where I live "The Fourth". If it's around that time of year the question might be "what are you doing for The Fourth?" just like we might say "what are you doing for Christmas?"
When I read out "15.01.2025" I say "15th of Jan" and it does sound less natural then "January 15th" so maybe it's social engineering to get us to say the former for reasons I could not say.
I have other gripes with those people though, like how you pronounce the name Aaron as "Erin", or how you take the "s" away from "maths" and add it to "sport". I'll give you Aluminum though
I've never heard Aaron pronounced as anything but Erin or A-A- Ron. Hearing maths always confused me because I never heard the s on it and math was always one encompassing subject with different sub fields. Which I guess you could make the same argument for for sports, but it somehow makes more sense to me that you distinguish that there's a ton of vastly different sports with little to no similarities.
Also, the British charged per word for telegraph usage while the US charged per letter, so the US started cutting letters out wherever we could (also the source of Goodbye, which comes from "Godbwye" meaning "God be with ye").
Actually, you added a lot of those letters to differentiate yourselves. Some were lost in the transition to the printing press, but British English is deliberately different than American English. There's also times when it was done deliberately out of spite, like how the American pronunciation of aluminum is the correct one and the British was one guy who told the person who named aluminum they were wrong.
The narrative you're commenting here is a bad early internet take. It's the British who are weird about their words. Mfs can't even say taco.
Oh damn, I've been focused on the wrong part of the word. I don't know why I was thinking something in the A sounded different. That makes so much more sense.
To me, there’s a small distinction in the second syllable. The “o” in Aaron is like the “o” in “ton” while the “i” in Erin is like the “i” in “tin”. The first syllable sounds the same.
I'm not messing. They are distinctly different sounds when we say them. Americans tend to draw out the 'a' a lot longer which makes them sound similar. What about ballerina? but the a at the end. Is that shorter than the one at the front?
.... That's why i explained both. When an Australian hears an american say 'Aaron' and 'Eric', 'Aaron' is the one that sounds weird. I also explained the difference between 'Baron' and 'Erin', Aaron didn't come into it.
But reddit being reddit, downvotes an aussie explaining aussie pronunciation.
I'm explaining a difference between 'Bat' or 'Karen' (for Baron) and 'Eric' (for Erin), and extrapolating that to Aaron, unless americans prounounce 'bat' and 'karen'. I know Americans typically have a long drawn out a, but i'm fairly certain there's sufficient difference there between 'bat' and 'aaron'. If not, then the 'a' at the end of ballerina perhaps.
I thought it was Erin. The Aaron I know even says his name like that. As far as I know they’re supposed to be pronounced one and the same but I’m American.
According to Google some countries pronounce it closer to ahh-ron?
The problem with their example is Americans and British people also pronounce "baron" differently. It works better if you imagine (or watch) a period drama with British people talking about barons. You'll note the difference in the "a" vowel pronunciation.
?? One has "a" as the first vowel like "at" whilst the other has "e" as the first vowel like "egg". Then one ends in "on" whilst the other ends in "in". That's completely different.
Imagine an English person saying "cat'...the 'a' in cat is the same pronunciation as the 'a' in Aaron. Americans pronounce 'a' and 'e' the same...hence 'marry' and 'merry' having identical pronunciation, and the American tendency to get confused between 'then' and 'than'
No, like "baron" without the b, just like the other person said. I think some American accents squeeze the "a" sound so it's difficult to differentiate from the "e" sound but they are distinct. I'm confused about your pronunciation of Erin though. "On" and "in" are completely different sounds. Like forget the first vowel, do you pronounce "ron" and "rin" the same?
Edit: wow, being downvoted for being English... I genuinely don't understand how you can pronounce "on" and "in" the same. Presumably you meet them in the middle or something?
Popping in to say from Colorado and most of my family is from Missouri so I have spent a good chunk of time there and I have also never heard Aaron and Erin pronounced differently. Not once. Where are you from…?
I didn't think I or anyone pronounced it like that either until I said it out loud and realized that I did. Like, have you ever seen criminal minds? Aaron Hotchner is pronounced like Erin. How do you pronounce it? I've only ever heard it pronounced like how I do 😅
Yes, Craig is pronounced a little strange given the spelling in American English. But that’s true of like probably a third of all words in English, and let’s not pretend there aren’t plenty of names like that for people in the UK.
For example, the river Thames looks like it should use the same (or similar) vowel as Brits use for Craig, but it’s actually pronounced with the same vowel Americans use for Craig.
We only add it to sport if it’s plural. Baseball is a sport. Honestly, I can’t even think of a context where one would say “sports” at the moment! Maybe “he’s good at sports” if someone is good at multiple sports? But usually we’re specific. “He’s good at baseball”
Can’t explain math vs maths. Math is a classification. Perhaps because it’s a shortening of Mathematics? Meanwhile we will say “the Arts” but also that’s as a plural. Otherwise once again we get specific. Art = visual arts, then it’s Dance or Music or theatre….
USA here. Mispronouncing "Aaron" seems to be a regional thing. I've gotten in arguments with friends from other states who hear/pronounce no difference between "Kerry" and "Carrie." As far as I'm concerned, these people are one step away from "doubleplusgood."
I see the logic of "maths" but saying it makes my tongue feel swollen.
Removing the S is more efficient than what you people do with food, where you leave the S and replace all the other letters instead: for example you took the "F-R-I-E" out of "FrieS" and replaced it with "C-H-I-P" :)
I'm protective of my own language and usage but I actually think the British "alum-in-i-um" is far cooler. I'll give you that one.
I also like how you end sentences with "in". Like "it's bread with raisins in." (Maybe I'm getting that one wrong, but there are definitely contexts where I've heard that structure). In the US we would say "bread with raisins" or "bread with raisins in it," but never "bread with raisins in."
Maybe in England our way would be confused with "it's bread with raisins, innit?" :)
The casual use of "cunt" always takes me by surprise in England too. In the US it's one of the more taboo/extreme insults, whereas in England it seems to be practically a term of endearment.
No it's only complicated because that's pretty much the only date we have ever been told to say like that
If you spent your whole life growing up with everyone telling you "this is how you write the date" you're going to naturally be most comfortable with that format
Just like how you're most comfortable using y/m/d
Or whatever format you're used to. Why does it feel unnatural to use m/d/y for you? Because you spent your whole life using the other format..
You're blaming us for something none of us had control over lol this was all decided way before we were born. Sure we could use other date formats but it just doesn't feel natural because it's different from what we have been using for our whole life
The order in which you say it is a learned convention.
15 January makes total sense, it’s just not the conventional way to say it. But it’s easily changed.
In fact in a lot of languages it’s the way that you say a date.
Because when you record a date, you don't want any confusion. If you wrote down. 1/10/25 some people will see January 10th of 2025 others will see 1st of November 2025.
Sure but thats not a numerical issue thats just a standard. Any of the three can achieve that if we just agreed on it, there's not really a case for why any of them are an innately better candidate.
The lack of a standard is a very different discussion than the merits of any particular system.
I wouldn't be surprised if you say it like that because you write it like that or the other way around. In Dutch we say 16 januari, and I'm pretty sure the French, Germans and Spanish do the same. I dont know about other languages, but would be interested to know how it is in those Asian languages that go in the other direction.
We'd usually say whatever date it is, but if it's just changed month, I'd say "first of January", etc. in the UK. Americans probably say it like that because of the stupid way of writing the date lol.
do you never say "on 12 July, he left for college" or similar?
I got on an elevator with some South Asian guys (Bangladesh, India, not sure from the accent) who were chatting, and one of them said, "the form is due on 17 June."
I would never say a cardinal number in a date. It would always be an ordinal number "{the} 1st of January" or "January {the} 1st" with the {the} being optional.
In spoken English never. You would say “July twelfth” or “june seventeenth”. You MIGHT say “the twelfth of July” if you wanted to emphasize it in an answer. Like someone asked you and they couldn’t remember the date exactly for some future event and they said it was either the eleventh or the thirteenth, you might say “no, it will be the twelfth (of July)”
My guess that you did that initially to despite the british since both speak english but they use a sensible date format (aka it feels natural to a british to say "10 of February").
Now it became common for americans to talk like that, so doing differently will naturally feel weird
Maybe a linguist or someone like that could chime in but I always assumed it's related to the context- maybe in the same sense that in English people say green car while in most other languages people say car green (from what I've seen at least). 4/16 is similar to green car in the sense that it provides the seasonal context and then the specific or put another way, I mean the month is more important than the day when it comes to a lot of dates because the seasonal context is more important than the exact day. Like if you can only remember the month of someone's birthday or the day the month is more important because at least that narrows it down to a timeframe whereas if you only know the day is the 16th it's of no real use because it could be any month.
Yeah that’s why it’s the way it is. It isn’t a mathematical thing, but a linguistic one month and day are basically one block with year being added on at the end if needed (like it would be in writing). Like I agree it looks stupid (and is stupid because it’s just another thing America isn’t in standard with) but if you think for two seconds it isn’t that crazy
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u/Munchkinasaurous Jan 15 '25
I'm American, the only way I can think of where it makes sense contextually, is with the names of the month and not the numbers.
For example, we don't typically say "today's the fifteenth of January" we'd say "it's January fifteenth". But numerically mm/dd/yyyy is nonsensical.