This tongue-in-cheek British PSA encourages Americans to vote for Trump

D’oh! I shouldn’t have relied on my decades-old high school German… Thanks.

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While it wasn’t the whole country, Canadian territory much larger than all of Germany was first, eh.

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When speaking English we say “tenth of October” with optional year. The child’s rhyme goes “remember, remember the fifth of November”. When speaking American, YMMV.

And in Russian, e.g. pyatovo noyabrya (пятого ноября).

Perhaps it changes when you’re a certain distance West of Greenwich?

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My experience is mainly in Europe and the UK… mostly it’s “10 October” whether in English or the local language, and 10/10 means “tenth of October” not “October 10th.” The latter seems to be strictly an Americanism.

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Even if they might say October 10 or 10 October with equal frequency, which I shall not yet admit, it’s not likely to include the year since this will be assumed. October 10 order, which is left to right, big to small kinda makes sense within a year, within English. But if you’re going to do that then - on adding the year into the equation - you’d logically (rationally?) add the year on the left - before the month - to avoid the silly yo-yo, reversing into a street-lamp, ordering of mdy.

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sounds like a few single cities and towns, not the whole province/territory/however-you-call-it-really

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ISO was there before you. ISO 8601. I spent years trying to train people to use it for engineering purposes. Say not the struggle naught availeth, the labour and the wounds are vain…

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It doesn’t really matter what you do or don’t admit, because in North America, we say “October 10th” or “the 10th of October”, and in Canada we use them with equal frequency: they’re both used, both correct, and both absolutely logical. It’s a shame that we don’t use day-month-year when writing dates, because it would save some confusion: but you can’t say that month-day-year is illogical, because it’s a natural and obvious consequence of the language.

And furthermore, some countries — notably Japan, China, and the Koreas — use year-month-day when writing a date numerically, going from largest to smallest, and that’s perfectly logical, too. The only system that’s never used, because it truly would be stupid, is year-day-month.

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I lived in an Indiana county that did not observe DST while I worked in Louisville KY, which did. We called it “fast time” and “slow time”. Talk about discombobulated.

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Just to add, in a lot of the former British colonies, they say “10th October” or “10 October” to be concise as opposed to the more proper “10th of October”. It’s sort of like they say “half eight” as opposed to “half past eight” or “quarter six” as opposed to “a quarter past (after) six” (which is different from “quarter of six”, which is 5:45 or a “quarter to six” as the Americans say).

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  1. Legal paper being the default choice for printer drivers instead of A4, and the one they seem to revert to at random even though the rest of us all use A4.
  2. Anything else connected with the US legal system
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and the A series is so elegantly done!

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As others have said, “10th (of) October)”, but that’s not really the point. If you’re saying the name of the month then it doesn’t really matter what order you say any of it in - there’s no ambiguity. It’s when using numbers that it makes much more sense to put them in order; either dd/mm/yy or yyyy-mm-dd.

(That said, it’s fun to watch Excel get confused trying to interpret dates.)

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I forgot to add:

I keep threatening to start writing the time of day the same way as the American format for dates: 10:03 = “ten to three” .

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Yes. “October 10th” is common in Canada.

You mean in Canada? The format I was taught in school many years ago was dd-mm-yy, with a note that Americans do it differently. However, it’s been a mess in recent years because of programs that only allow the US form. These days I usually use yyyy-mm-dd, to make it clear which number is the year.

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This is a whole new can of worms because in German and Russian half 6 = 5:30. I didn’t come across the infuriating English use until I had the German one thoroughly in my head, now somebody says “half eight”, I say “do you mean 7:30” they look at me as if I’m mad.

I don’t know, let me analyze it for a moment.
My small gripe: British pronouncing Arkansas as Are-can-sass and not Are-can-saw.

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Don’t forget Kansans and Coloradoans doing the same. You know, because of the Ar-kan-sas river (which then changes to Ar-kan-saw in Oklahoma).

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Legal is 8.5x14" and never the default, which is Letter, 8.5x11".

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The fact is, you can run a direct line of influence from America’s stubborn refusal to standardize measures (including of dates) with the rest of the developed world and Donald Trump.

Weird thing about that statement is that it is only half in jest.

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