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I love the term "middle endianness" and how clearly it highlights how nuts the American date notation is. EDIT: fwiw, in my native language, most numbers from
by skrebbel 7y ago
I love the term "middle endianness" and how clearly it highlights how nuts the American date notation is.
EDIT: fwiw, in my native language, most numbers from 100 and 1000 are pronounced middle endian, so I'm not complaining.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoThe American date notation is simply a direct reflection of the spoken language. We say "February second, 2020" and we write "2/2/2020". (Contra the root comment, I can't agree that 2/2/2020 is a palindrome.) I don't see this as being crazy or even unusual. When order matters, you invariably want big-endian notation, which is why that notation is acceptable everywhere regardless of the usual native notation. But by the same token, it means that all other styles are equally "nuts". European day-month-year notation doesn't have any technical advantages over month-day-year.
- justinclift 7y ago> We say "February second, 2020" ... Interesting. We (Australian) say "Second of Feb, 2020". ;)
- rags2riches 7y agoWhat about the Fourth of July then?
- thaumasiotes 7y agoWhat about it? It's the name of a holiday. 12/25 is often called Christmas, and yet 9/29 is never called Michaelmas. Same thing.
- stevekemp 7y agoThe parent was making the point that generally Americans refer to dates such as "May 2nd", "April 14th". But one of their biggest holidays is explicitly called "4th of July", changing the ordering.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoAnd a proper name is not good evidence of normal usage. "Christmas" is normal use in an older, Catholic method of identifying calendar dates. Americans don't use that method; most couldn't if they wanted to. But Christmas itself is still identified that way for historical reasons -- the word has gone from being an example of talking about the calendar to being an example of a proper name. "4th of July" is not a method that Americans couldn't use if they wanted to, but it is an ossified usage that doesn't reflect how Americans generally refer to dates. Like Christmas, it is a proper name of limited evidentiary value.
- Kaiyou 7y agoHuh, where I'm from the 24th of December is Christmas. The 25th is the day after Christmas.
- loco5niner 7y agoReally? Where are you from? This might help explain how Santa delivers all those presents in "one night".
- Kaiyou 7y agoPossibly it's the difference between being an atheist and a catholic, since I faintly remember my catholic friends receiving presents on the morning of the 25th, while I would receive them on the evening of the 24th.
- hibbelig 7y agoThat middle-endianness is spoken doesn’t make it better. It’s still crazy. Starting with the most general and ending with the most specific is a logical order. Doing it the other way round is also logical. But starting with the middle makes no sense. It doesn’t seem unusual to you because you use it often. That said I’m German and I realize that German postal addresses are crazy for the same reason. I wish we‘d adopt the Chinese format: country first then province (state), then County then town then neighborhood then street and house. German addresses are middle endian: street then house number then zip code then city then country. The right order seems to be: city, zip, street, house number. Most general to most specific.
- cortesoft 7y agoFor something like addresses, usage pattern is going to matter... if most mail is sent within the city, then putting street first makes sense, because the city is almost always the same; it shouldn't take up valuable real estate at the front of the address. The broadest unit that is likely to change going first makes sense.
- gsich 7y agoOr from botton to top: country, city, zip, housenumber, street, name.
- mopsi 7y agoWhat's so crazy about the German notation? Seems to make perfect sense, as it goes line-by-line from the smallest to the largest sorting unit: 1. Exact street location (street + house) 2. District (postal code) 3. City 4. Country Also I prefer this order over the Chinese, because I assume most people handling mail will need to smallest details and it would just be very annoying if local mailmen had to skip over country and city names every time before reaching the bit they actually need.
- lucideer 7y agoYou listed two details on one line to make the German notation seem non-crazy. A more "logical" notation, as per the gp's comment would start: 1. Exact street location (house + street)
- gmac 7y agoChicken and egg. I (in British English) say the second of February.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoI would agree that there's influence in both directions between the written pattern and the usual manner of speech. All I'm saying here is that there's nothing surprising about the written pattern matching the usual manner of speech. That is the primary purpose of writing; it's weirder for the writing not to match the speech. (Although certainly not unheard of; it is the norm in e.g. Chinese.)
- elif 7y agoUnfortunately, you're using an idiosyncratic American "usual manner of speech" to justify an idiosyncratic American format.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoAnd the problem with that is... what? Are you saying we should all speak Chinese because spoken Chinese dates go in correct sorting order?
- umanwizard 7y agoIdiosyncratic? Of course. People in different countries speak differently. Every natural language is totally arbitrary and “idiosyncratic”. What is your point?
- iso947 7y agoThe assertion that most people and most countries in spoken language say “day [of] month”, which I find anecdotally accurate, although that’s mainly in European countries and languages This matches why almost every country in the world uses “d/m/y” in normal usage.
- 7y ago
- Thorrez 7y agoLittle endian notation is somewhat mixed endian itself, because it contains 3 numbers, each number by itself is big endian, but the 3 numbers are arranged in little endian fashion amongst each other.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- iso947 7y agoD/m/y is little endian. In a base 10,000 system there would be 3 symbols, each unique.
- Thorrez 7y agoSure, but humans would have a hard time memorizing 10,000 symbols.
- nkrisc 7y agoIf each unique symbol for a number was made up of smaller symbols arranged using a simple algorithm you wouldn't necessarily need to memorize them all. Kind of like Roman numerals, but much a bit more complex. I don't have to remember the exact symbol for 2,020 in Roman numerals, because I can figure it out. In fact, I have no idea what it would be without sitting down and doing so. I'm not saying it would be a good system, but it could be usable by mere mortals. I guess you could debate if this would really be "10,000 unique symbols" or just something akin to our current writing system for numbers.
- gorgoiler 7y agoJust as with inches, feet, and pounds the system works better in practical real world conversation than it does in more formal language. “When’s your birthday? 10/23. When are we going to Ma’s? 11/19 thru 11/29. When do you go back into therapy? 12/8.”
- Symbiote 7y ago“When’s your birthday? 23/10. When are we going to Mum’s? 19-29/11. When do you go back into therapy? 8/12.” As it could be written in English in Britain, Australia etc. 23/10 is pronounced "23rd of October" or (usually) "23rd'f October" or "23rd'f the 10th". The range is "19th to 29th of November" or "... of the 11th". The pronunciation "second of the second twenty-twenty" is usually used when the listener is writing, typing or confirming the date in figures.
- StavrosK 7y agoIt doesn't "work better" than any other system, you're just more used to it.
- emanuensis 7y agoi think this especially goes for the English system vs metric measurements (though confusingly the English do not use the Imperial system, officially at least) Our brains are much better wired for binary systems like bushels and pecks rather than the French derived decimal system which is only good for studious things (like science) where you have of many orders of magnitude to keep track of regularly. Much easier to communicate/grasp half than 5/10ths. Similarly the Sexagesimal notation, in common use (clocks etc), points to an generalization that would have been much better than the French system, where we rely on primes for increasing places in the number. Eg 4321(primal) would be 4x5 + 3x3 + 2x2 +1x1 = 34(decimal). Historically we may be stuck with counting on our fingers and toes though, through eternity. The more "logical" Metric system which is not an extension of the "practical" Imperial system is inevitably bastardized and Creoled in everyday usage. Eg one buys a "Pound Plus" of Chocolate from Trader Joe's (500 grams!). Why is the choice is not one (or fice) Hectogram(s) vs one Kilogram i do not know... except that Hectogram is so obtuse/abstruse i had to google it! Maybe someone in a Metric country can correct me, if they think i am wrong using words like abstruse. One inevitably finds doubling and halving in everyday commerce. We would do a lot better to extend to tripling, quintupling etc, like the Babylonians did, than directly to the (insane, in my opinion :-) French 10x Metric system. Not that i am an American chauvinist. Eg i think the American middle endianistic dating system is off the wall weird, and i go out of my way to circumvent it.
- DonHopkins 7y agoDoes you native language also have gendered numbers? Is there gender parity with odd numbers male and even numbers female? Or does it enforce the numeric patriarchy by gendering prime numbers male and composite numbers female? https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/are_numbers_gendered https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/are_numbers... https://www.livescience.com/15859-odd-numbers-male-female.html https://www.livescience.com/15859-odd-numbers-male-female.ht...
- Naracion 7y agoOut of curiosity, what's your native language?
- skrebbel 7y agoDutch. Afaik all Germanic languages except English¹ (and close relatives) have the same thing. Ie this stuff is the same in Dutch, German, Swedish, Danish², etc. We don't say "Twenty-three" but "Three-and-twenty". So far so good, but we do the hundreds, thousands etc just like English does. Thus, 123 is pronounced "hundred-three-and-twenty", i.e. precisely as nuts as what Americans do with dates. ¹) I assume that English fixed this at some point along the way (maybe due to French influences?), because the special number names between 10 and 20 do follow continental Germanic rules, eg compare "sixteen" and "twenty-one". We mainland Europeans like to mock the English speaking world for their insane unit systems, but at least their numbers make sense. ²) Danish has it worse. They have the same insane number ordering plus insane number names. 3 is "tre", 30 is "tredive". 4 is "fire", 40 is "fyrre". So far so good. Like in many languages, 10x sounds a bit like x. But 6 is "seks", and 60 is "treds" (!). To make matters worse, 5 is "fem" but 50 is.. "halvtreds" (!!). Similarly 9 is "ni" and 90 is "halvfems". In Danish, for x <= 5 < 10, 10x sounds like ["", "halv"][x mod 2] + ceil(x / 20). I tried mocking the language by saying "fems" instead of "hundrede" but I just got blank stares. And I'm lucky enough to have grown up on the same insane middle endianness as the Danes. I can't imagine how impossible Danish numbers must be to learn for eg an English speaker. Every time my wife says a number in Danish I spend half a minute doing the math, "she said something with 'tre' in it, so threes, but it ended with an s, so three times twenty, oh but wait there was 'halv' in front of it so subtract 10, ah, fifty". But she didn't say that, she said "to-hundrede-tre-og-halvtreds". By the time I'm done with the math I already forgot the other digits :-)
- Symbiote 7y ago(And you didn't even mention how "tredive" is pronounced.) Swedish and Norwegian (and English for that matter) used to count the Germanic way, but swapped to the modern way for 20 onwards at various points. There's an English nursery rhyme "Four and Twenty Blackbirds" which has the old way as its title. English also used to use the vigesimal system. My great-grandfather was supposedly a bit of a traditionalist even amongst his rural friends, who poked fun at him for saying things like "two score nine? I'm not paying that!".
- droithomme 7y ago> how clearly it highlights how nuts the American date notation is Middle Endian dates make sense when the season something happens in is important.