Why do Americans do the date differently?
- Thread starter Rockchimp69
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No, because I never said this applied to time. I also never said this was the best way, I said it's the only justification I can think of as to why we do this.88chaz88 said:By your logic that makes the time here 58:14.Ironic Pirate said:I don't mean more specific then the other way, I mean as a progression, from left to right.Merkavar said:
11/17/95. 11 is November, and there's thirty Novembers a year. Since the invention of the modern calendar, there's been thousands of days in November. 17 is the day in November. There's only 12 17ths a year, and only one November 17th. Over the course of time, there's still a lot of them, but not as many as in November, if this still makes sense.
And then there's the year. 1995. There's only going to be 365 days in that year, ever. It's the most specific.
I'll explain it to you too. It's going from left to right, getting more specific.Triscut900 said:
MrEnigami said:
Again, I never said it was better. I'm just saying that this is possibly a justification for the way it is.
Merkavar said:17/11/95Ironic Pirate said:I don't mean more specific then the other way, I mean as a progression, from left to right.Merkavar said:
11/17/95. 11 is November, and there's thirty Novembers a year. Since the invention of the modern calendar, there's been thousands of days in November. 17 is the day in November. There's only 12 17ths a year, and only one November 17th. Over the course of time, there's still a lot of them, but not as many as in November, if this still makes sense.
And then there's the year. 1995. There's only going to be 365 days in that year, ever. It's the most specific.
I'll explain it to you too. It's going from left to right, getting more specific.Triscut900 said:
17 is the days, there are 12 days that are the 17th in a year, 11 is november, there are 30 days that are novembers in a year. 95 is the year there are 365 days in the year that are 95
so using your example i still prefer normal date system where its goes from smallest to biggest.
and no matter what order the date format with each step it gets more specific 17th could be in any month or year. 17/11 one specific month. but lets say that the date goes day then year
17/95 its more specific cause its one day of any month in 1995.
anyway enough gibberish
this pretty much sums it up
This argument is going to go nowhere, because I think we're all trying to restrain ourselves from saying "Because it seems natural, damn it!". We were brought up to say it a certain way, and that's the way we're going to say it. Neither way is actually better, one is just more common.
So there. Have your "Go America!" picture, have your date system. I'll have my date system, and I'll just make jokes about England just being mad that they lost all their colonies. Compromise?
Shit, I meant to put "November days a year".GrizzlerBorno said:
Well fuck, that's what you get when you only sleep for three hours.
Who cares? The most logical date system, to me at least, is YYYY/MM/DD, and neither us (USA) or you other people that do it "right" do it that way.
I always felt the most natural version was year/month/day, since that bears the most resemblance to how we use numbers in general.Rockchimp69 said:
(the part that changes most quickly is the rightmost part).
Only Japan uses that order as far as I know though.
But to get back to the point at hand, someone did actually explain the historical reason for the Americandate order to me once.
Because I was wondering the same thing.
It has to do with book-keeping. (or accounting, in other words).
Back when this literally meant writing your accounts in a book, it meant that you could organise your accounts more easily.
I've gotten a little fuzzy on the details, so I'm probably not explaining it very well, but I think what it meant was that you could have a single accounting book for each month, with entries in it for each day of that month.
This means that you'd open the book for month 12, say, then look for the entries from the 14th.
So the date format mimics the order in which you would look up a date in a set of accounting books.
(This doesn't explain why the year is on the end though, but I guess depending on circumstance, knowing the year might not be as important as the other parts of the date.)
Edit: also, for other ideas as to why these orders exist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_date
From Wikipedia, so take it for what that's worth.
I really like this explanation, too.
Jedoro said:
Wow. That is just ridiculous. You do realize that language naturally evolves over time right? The US has been an entire ocean apart from England for over 200 years, it's perfectly normal for our language to have diverged. Hell, people in England don't even speak the same language they did 200 years ago. The idea that Americans should still sound exactly like people in England is just stupid, especially since there are different accents and dialects even within England.ReservoirAngel said:
It obvious you just have a huge bias against the US and are looking for any excuse to hate us more.
Back on topic, I can't speak for the OP's intent but it seems like he had a perfect legitimate question about a simple cultural difference and I find in hilarious that people are actually trying to objectively prove that one way of doing it is better than the other. It's just personal preference people, it's not that big of a deal.
Also... this...
Criquefreak said:
As an aside, I got confused when I read the release date for DC Universe Online. It read 1.11.11 and I immediately thought, "why are they letting you preorder this game nearly a year in advance?!"
You're Supposed to sleep late on 31st night. and again, i got what you meant.Ironic Pirate said:
Well, Happy New Year.
**This is meant to be satire**
To me, it usualy seems that America struggles alot when it comes to following new standards, in the industrial revolution, america did alot of inovations and I dare say, were mostly ahead of the pack.
To say the least, that gives you a major ego boost.
Now fastforward in the mid-70s... they started getting behind alot of industrialized asian countries and some european ones... it's pretty much where new standards were established as far as it goes for weight/distance/mesuring scales.
Also remember that America simply doesn't give an inch to anyone, every action is perceived as political. Say you follow a world movement, but you didn't start it... Most americans would probably perceive it as either giving up or surrendering. Hell, just look at how Fox News lit up when Obama politely bowed to the Japanese Emperor as a sign of respect.
Thruth be told, the world kept on going without them driving the bus anymore.
It's obviously a theory... but I couldn't see any reasonable explanation to defend such old standards past 2010.
To me, it usualy seems that America struggles alot when it comes to following new standards, in the industrial revolution, america did alot of inovations and I dare say, were mostly ahead of the pack.
To say the least, that gives you a major ego boost.
Now fastforward in the mid-70s... they started getting behind alot of industrialized asian countries and some european ones... it's pretty much where new standards were established as far as it goes for weight/distance/mesuring scales.
Also remember that America simply doesn't give an inch to anyone, every action is perceived as political. Say you follow a world movement, but you didn't start it... Most americans would probably perceive it as either giving up or surrendering. Hell, just look at how Fox News lit up when Obama politely bowed to the Japanese Emperor as a sign of respect.
Thruth be told, the world kept on going without them driving the bus anymore.
It's obviously a theory... but I couldn't see any reasonable explanation to defend such old standards past 2010.
Pretty much this and they wanted to make themselves seem different from the other coloniesReservoirAngel said:
In the case of dates, on the net it can confuse people as to what date they are refering to, esp for days before the 12th so you dont know if 10/4/2011 means 10th April 2011 or 4th October 2011, its anoying and silly and they should conform to the norm and have a standard system world wide.Squidden said:
Think of it as a file system. You're essentially going from larger sub-sections to more specific (although the Japanese system is even more so, being Year/Month/Day). The month first gives you a general reference point, preparing you better for the specific day. i.e, giving the month first gives you a better point of what someone may be getting at earlier, as mentioning "December" already gives you clues on what may have happened in December, with the date then going to specify more clearly. In short, it's used because it handles it more like a file system than Day/Month/Year.
I know in Canada when we wrote the date say to submit something. I was January 1, 2010, that's why I think we write it month/date/year. Do you write it, 1, January 2010?