4 ms·

Idiosyncratic? Of course. People in different countries speak differently. Every natural language is totally arbitrary and “idiosyncratic”. What is your point?

• iso947 7y ago
  The 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 ago
    If 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 ago
      I 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 ago
        The 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.