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Comment by blago | Hacker News Reader

I recently realized that M-D-Y makes a lot more sense than we give it credit for. Date formats needn't be about the cardinality of the units, in this case it's about spoken language. The M-D-Y format simply follows the order of the words in (EDIT: American) English. We say January 4th, 1970. Try reading D-M-Y in (EDIT: American) English and you will quickly realize that it doesn't make sense. I suspect most other spoken languages use 4th January, 1970 so D-M-Y feels more natural to them.

EDIT: I'm sorry if I offended you by equating American English with English. Point taken. I misspoke. The point remains.

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> We say January 4th, 1970. Try reading D-M-Y in English and you will quickly realize that it doesn't make sense.

Beware your unconscious ethnocentricity! Presumably you are American. I am English. English is the language I use.

The D-M-Y format simply follows the order of the words in English. "We" say 4th of January, 1970. Try reading D-M-Y in English and you will quickly realise that it does make perfect sense... D-M-Y feels more natural to us.

Good. Then we both agree that date formats tend to reflect spoken language, not unit cardinality. FWIW English is my second language. I'm sorry if my ethnocentricity offended you.

I would say “[the] 4th of January 1970” in English. I think saying “January 4th” is an Americanism. It feels to me that in some sense 4th is acting as an adjective coming after the noun it modifies, which is unusual in English.

Interesting that Americans commonly say "The fourth of July". Is that a carry over from 1700's American parlance?

> We say January 4th, 1970

I'd say "the fourth of January". Also, quick question - what do you call Independence Day in the USA? :)

Both ways are valid and can sound fine, it just depends on the locale and context.

It is true that this is common in American English. This goes somewhat to explain why patriotic Americans get together every year to celebrate the most American of holidays, "July Fourth" :)

Sorry, but English speaking countries that use DMY simply say "4th of January", and it in no way doesn't make sense.

I always like the visual look of D-M-Y in writing; a word bounded by two numbers (1 January 1970).

If it's going to be all numbers, 1970-01-01 seems like the right way to do it. (RFC3339 is the best time format.)

Yes, in England we’d typically say “(the) 4th of January, 1970”, in line with D-M-Y. I have no idea if the correlation is causation, or which caused the other.

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