3 ms·
Chicken and egg. I (in British English) say the second of February.
by gmac 7y ago
Chicken 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.
- umanwizard 7y agoIf you were aware of the mind-boggling diversity of human language you would not make claims like “typical languages do X so one that doesn’t is idiosyncratic” (unless backed by serious research spanning the thousands of known languages). You would also not think experience with a few languages from the Indo-European family is generalizable. Standard Chinese for example uses Y/M/D and I’m sure you can find many examples of other formats.
- Symbiote 7y agoI think the only major language using the M, D, Y spoken order are American-influenced English and Ewe (Ghana etc). Several countries write a short data as M/D/Y, but these mostly have a significant American influence.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoThe claim was "almost every country in the world uses d/m/y in normal usage", which doesn't pass the laugh test. It wasn't "almost every country in the world doesn't use m/d/y", even if you would have liked it to be.
- iso947 7y agoBritish English? Which part of the UK is that from. I speak English English.