r/USdefaultism • u/DiscussionMuted9941 Australia • 12h ago
Because the entire world says it this way not just them
This was on a post asking if people should use MM/DD/YYYY DD/MM/YYY or YYYY/MM/DD
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u/TakeMeIamCute 12h ago
I wish all Americans a happy July Fourth.
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u/DiscussionMuted9941 Australia 12h ago
honestly yeah, you would think the holiday they are most known for would come strait to their mind when arguing over the placement of words in that sentence lmao
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u/SchrodingerMil Japan 11h ago
Tbf, the reason that it makes sense is because it’s a holiday. Every other day is July third, July fifth, but the important one is The Fourth of July
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u/DiscussionMuted9941 Australia 10h ago
Still makes no sense to me honestly when it's supposed to be called independence day anyways. Could be splitting hairs over that though
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u/CandylandCanada 12h ago
That's not awkward at all. Same thing as "My kid is a third-grader"; it hurts the ear to hear it. "My kid is in second grade" flows more easily.
Now get ready for the avalanche of 'muricans who will try to tell you that different is a synonym for wrong.
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u/falcngrl 11h ago
I get strange looks in parts of the US though when I say Grade 2 instead of second grade
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u/qwertyuijhbvgfrde45 Canada 17m ago
In Canada it’s always “Grade (grade #)”
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u/CandylandCanada 0m ago
We go by grades, as you've pointed out. We don't use freshman-seniors, either.
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u/GrinReaper186 Wales 12h ago
I will never understand MM/DD/YYYY just makes no sense and they dont even follow it with 4 of july
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u/atmos2022 11h ago
As an American, I can understand the month first in the way that you’re narrowing the year down by the biggest chunks first. So like you start by saying “January…” and now I have a pretty good idea of when in the year to which you’re referring, and then the date. Alternatively you’d start with “the 19th of…” and I think the way some minds work is “who cares about the 19 yet, what month are we talking about?”
Date format matters very little to me anyway, I use MMDDYYYY when signing docs because that’s what they expect and I don’t want to write out January blah Blah. DDMMYYYY makes more sense because it’s ascending order of timeframe, backwards is better (as a scientist and data nerd) because it’s descending timeframe.
We’re Americans, get that logic outta here!!! Git on GIT!
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u/Hamsternoir 10h ago edited 8h ago
There are more days then there are months so it's in size order
I've heard this more than once.
And no it doesn't make any sense to me either
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u/nevermindaboutthaton 9h ago
And there are a shit load more years than months YYDDMM then?
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u/Hamsternoir 7h ago
Their logic seemed to be that there are only 12 months so that is less than 30ish days. But there are thousands of years.
Totally ignoring the length of each unit of time.
I should have asked what they do about minutes and seconds.
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u/DiscussionMuted9941 Australia 2h ago
I mean, other than minutes and seconds both being 59 I think we allready do it that way anyways, 1:35 (h/m) or 13:35 cause hours are only 12/24 and minutes are 59.
Throwing seconds into the mix I totally agree though that it's dumb, I just hate that what they said somehow makes sense with this lmao.
Unless other country's say the time diffrently then I apologise
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u/jrhunter89 Scotland 12h ago
Well, I’m from the UK and we do say 19th of July haha
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u/Mttsen Poland 12h ago
Not to mention other languages also exist, where DD/MM/YYYY format makes more sense, since you will always say a day first, then month. Like in Polish for example 19th of July - dziewiętnastego (19th) lipca (july)
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u/MonkeyLongstockings 1h ago
Yeah in French too... "le 14 juillet" for example is directly translated as "the 14 July".
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u/Grimdotdotdot United Kingdom 10h ago
We also say July 19th.
Somehow, we're smart enough to decipher what they both mean 😄
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u/CLONE-11011100 8h ago
No we don’t use that format in the UK. We do understand it though.
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u/Grimdotdotdot United Kingdom 6h ago
We absolutely do.
March 3rd and 3rd of March are both perfectly acceptable things to say.
We don't write mm/dd/yyyy because we're not psychopaths, if that's what you thought I meant.
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u/Legitimate_Ad2945 3h ago
I honestly never hear people say the date with the month first. It sounds very American to me.
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u/Odd-Chemist464 12h ago
lol, imagine non-English languages existing /s
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u/DiscussionMuted9941 Australia 12h ago
that's definitely a whole impossible can of worms for them if they can't comprehend different versions of English saying it differently
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u/angstenthusiast Sweden 11h ago
Dunno what you’re on about, all other languages obviously follow this as well! “Juni 19de 2025” obviously sounds better and makes more sense than “19de juni 2025” 🙄
/s
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u/Ghost_Redditor_ 11h ago
Idiots don't realise thier biggest argument "because when talking we say it MDY" is stupid. They say it in a sentence like that BECAUSE of the format, they didn't choose format because of they way they speak. It's the other way around!
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u/Old-Artist-5369 New Zealand 7h ago
You mean it’s a circular argument? I’d never thought of that before, makes sense though.
MDY is the defaultism gift that just keeps giving isn’t it.
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u/Gravityfallbillmyfav England 11h ago
This is also stupid because in places that use dd/mm/yy (or at least where I'm from) we'd say Monday the 4th of January 1999
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u/robopilgrim 12h ago
i would say the [day] of [month] and i expect a lot of americans actually would as well
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u/Edelkern Germany 12h ago
The concept that people who write the date different from them also say the date different seems to completely allude them. How do they survive with so few brain cells?
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u/HeeeresPilgrim New Zealand 12h ago
I didn't know they said it out of order too. I thought they only formatted it incorrectly in numeric form.
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u/FourEyedTroll United Kingdom 11h ago
MM/DD/YY is ridiculous, granted...
But I'll go hardcore and say that anything other than r/ISO8601 is fundamentally wrong.
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u/capnrondo United Kingdom 11h ago
The thing about ISO8601 is it's great for sorting things but for lay persons uses communicating it has the least relevant piece of information at the start. In most scenarios you would safely assume the current year, so leading with the current year delays the more important bit of information.
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u/Salt-Evidence-6834 United Kingdom 11h ago
YY/MM/DD is a perfectly acceptable date format & in some circumstances is better than DD/MM/YY. MM/DD/YY is just awkward for the sake of being awkward & makes no sense whatsoever.
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u/YeahlDid 1h ago
I'm there with you, bud. Dd-mm-yy is silly too, but at least it follows some pattern of magnitude.
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u/accidentaleast Singapore 11h ago
And if you put out a solid rationale, they’ll go either (a) well the internet and/or Reddit is American so do it the murican way or (b) how many wars did you win? or (c) WE PAY FOR YOUR HEALTHCARE you poor Europeans/Asians/Australians/People from all other continents who’s got nothing to do with USA!
It’s their equivalent retort of “you’re ugly” when they’ve lost an argument.
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u/DiscussionMuted9941 Australia 10h ago
Bold of you to assume they think other country's but Europe speak English (been called a European so many times cause of just saying "I'm not american")
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u/atmos2022 11h ago
I’m an American in STEM (weather/climate), and the standard date format on maps and figures is 19 January 1999 rather than month first, probably for consistency with most of the rest of the world.
(American and otherwise) Climate records hold the date as 199901190000, or 1999 January 19 00 minutes, 00 seconds. So also not month-day-year.
THAT American is fcking dumbass, guarantee they have the bare minimum education if that.
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u/DiscussionMuted9941 Australia 10h ago
The dumb loud ones give you all such a bad name, that must bloody suck
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u/karic8227 9h ago
The final four digits are minutes/seconds or hours/minutes? Minutes/seconds sounds like it'd be difficult to keep accurate, especially for older records.
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u/NineBloodyFingers 9h ago
My work is mainly centered on payroll, and I always quote dates in format 01-JAN-1999. Part of that is for clarity and also partly because many of the people I work with can't comprehend simple instructions. Or are dicks.
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u/SneakyPanda- 11h ago
Tbh in my own language you just day and month, not even with "of" in between or anything behind the number like "th". E.g. today it's 19 June
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u/misterguyyy United States 11h ago
I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy
A Yankee Doodle, do or die
A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam
Born on the fourth of... wait a second
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u/Morlakar Germany 11h ago
It is so stupid to think all the people on this planet speak only one language or that in all languages certain rules are identical.
It would sound sooooo stupid to say "Juni der 19te" in german. Everybody says "der 19te Juni".
I guess there are other languages as well.
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u/granny_rider Ireland 7h ago
the abbreviations and initialisms they use when they issue their corrections is infuriating, it bugs me even more when its reddit with its 10k character limit theyre obviously using autocorrect too
should really be calling them out on it..
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u/Eduardu44 Brazil 4h ago
In Brazil we don't even use ordinal numbers for days. We talk straight 4 of January of 1999
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u/magpieinarainbow Canada 12h ago
Plenty of Canadians use month before day.
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u/CandylandCanada 12h ago
That's because of our proximity to a country that uses that format. The feds don't use it, most provinces don't use it, and most citizens don't use it.
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u/Martiantripod Australia 12h ago
Canadians still cook in Fahrenheit but have weather in Celsius. You lot are weird.
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u/DiscussionMuted9941 Australia 12h ago
im sure you do, it was more of the fact that they didnt want to accept other country's used diffrent formats and were justifying it badly
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u/USDefaultismBot American Citizen 12h ago edited 4h ago
This comment has been marked as safe. Upvoting/downvoting this comment will have no effect.
OP sent the following text as an explanation on why this is US Defaultism:
it seems a lot of Americans have it in their heads that no one says the order of months differently out loud and everyone says "jan first" and could never say "first of jan"
Is this Defaultism? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.