China, Mongolia, and Japan are the primary countries in which dates are written like that. More people live in China so it was a much safer bet to guess with the largest of the three. Sorry.
Year-month-day is also used in Hungary. I'm not Hungarian but that's what I use because 1) it's the international standard ISO 8601 therefore the only scientific way of writing dates (yeah, that and fractional Julian days), 2) followed by hour minute second, it's ordered from big to small, 3) sorting such dates alphabetically sorts them chronologically which is very convenient for file names.
The middle-endian, where today is 1/23/15 January 23, 2015. This one was actually used along with the little-endian format across Britain and the U.S. until they split in around 1900. The rationale behind this format comes from a practice of using arabic numerals (1,5,10 etc.) for years and days, and roman numerals (I,V,X, etc.) for the month. Why would people do this? It comes from an even older practice where somebody (Julius Augustus) decided to mess up the calendar by adding two new months. Again, this was not the norm, but one of several competing forms.
I'm from the U.S so of course I think our method works well and the European one is the one that is all screwed up. It's all about where you are from and what you are used to
I live in the US, but travel through Europe alot.... The European method is more logical, but the US method also makes sence because when you say a date you prince it March 4th, 2015, not 4th of March 2015
The American system is month/day/year because you say the month, then the day, then the year. To me, that seems logical, but I also grew up with that system.
I didn't see that comment until now, but the majority of the United States speaks English, so the fact that it doesn't apply to many languages isn't really a huge deterrent. Also, I'm not saying either system is better than the other; I'm just used to the American one.
Think about how you say it.
Most people will say the date as "January twenty-fourth, two thousand fifteen", not "The twenty-fourth of January, two thousand fifteen". When written down as it's said it looks like "1/24/15" not "24/1/15". Therefore both ways of saying it make sense and it depends on personal preference.
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· 9 years ago
Here in Australia, it's much more common to say 'The twenty-fourth of January, two thousand and fifteen.' The reason Americans probably say the former is because of the way the date is written there.
I don't agree with the diagram... These aren't three stages of a continuum, they are three distinct units of time. They don't stack on top of one another; that makes no sense.
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· 9 years ago
They are three stages of a continuum though....a year's bigger than a month and a month's bigger than a day, hence the differently sized stacks...
But if it's a continuum, then what is between a day and a month, or a month and a year? It suggests that days can get longer until they become a month, and months can get longer until they become years. And by the triangle shape, it suggests that there are days bigger than other days.
Don't worry too much about it, I know I'm nitpicking. ;P
Or am I reading the pyramid wrong and that's what it's saying?
Most people will say the date as "January twenty-fourth, two thousand fifteen", not "The twenty-fourth of January, two thousand fifteen". When written down as it's said it looks like "1/24/15" not "24/1/15". Therefore both ways of saying it make sense and it depends on personal preference.
Or at least thats how we say it. Not The 13th of December, 2014.
Don't worry too much about it, I know I'm nitpicking. ;P