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Odd thoughts

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2023 5:10 pm
by IanKennedy
I've just had an odd thought. In America you say your dates with the month first, so April 4th, December 25th etc. We do it the other way around 4th of April, 25th of December etc.

The odd thought is why is the film called "Born on the Fourth of July"?

Re: Odd thoughts

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2023 7:26 pm
by T'Pau
My guess is that example follows a Springsteen song title, as well as the 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' song with the same lyric.

Re: Odd thoughts

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2023 7:32 pm
by Nutso
It's the title of the Ron Kovic's autobiography. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_on_t ... th_of_July

Re: Odd thoughts

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2023 7:54 pm
by RK_Striker_JK_5
I'm now wondering why the UK and the USA do it differently...

Re: Odd thoughts

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2023 10:07 pm
by IanKennedy
Who knows. We do it in a logical order, smallest largest. day, month, year. 13th February 1965. America goes February 13, 1965, which is middle, small then large. China and other parts of Asia also do it logically, but totally different from the UK. They go year, month, day. Which has an advantage of being alphabetically sortable.

Re: Odd thoughts

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2023 10:11 pm
by IanKennedy
The odd thing is this is an American wrote the autobiography, the song and the movie. An American directed the movie and yet they are using he British system.

Re: Odd thoughts

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2023 11:22 pm
by Nutso
I wonder if the way we verbalize dates in the U.S. was inspired by some kind of pop culture phenomenon like a war movie where the hero is writing correspondence to his love at home and says the date as "June 25th, 1942?" The way how Sir Patrick Stewart is alleged to have secured the pronunciation of 'data' from dah-tah to day-ta?

Re: Odd thoughts

Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2023 2:09 am
by McAvoy
US military uses the smallest to large format too. So 04APR23 in logbook entries.

Not sure why we do the month first.