I’m sorry but it doesn’t make sense TO ME. Based on what I was taught, regardless of the month, I think what matters first is to know what day of the month you are in, if at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of said month. After you know that, you can find out the month to know where you are in the year.
What is the benefit of doing it the other way around?
EDIT: To avoid misunderstandings:
- I am NOT making fun OF ANYONE.
- I am NOT negatively judging ANYTHING.
- I am totally open to being corrected and LEARN.
- This post is out of pure and honest CURIOSITY.
So PLEASE, don’t take it the wrong way.
In normal conversation, it’s more common (at least here) to say “May 31st” than “the 31st of May.” I think the order of the numerical only dating system is just reflecting that.
Then why “fourth of July”?
Because English isn’t allowed to be consistent.
Probably specifically to stress that it is A Special Day and not just july fourth
I suspect that when the holiday was getting going, it was spread by music, and “July 4th” doesn’t carry the lyric … Utility of “fourth of July”
The phrase “Born on, the fourth of, July!” Is buried in my consciousness but I can’t name the song or any other lines to go with it.
Then again, you also write $5 but say it five dollars. The way something is said can be different from how it is written.
The French, at least in Canada, put the currency symbol after the number.
Sure, but the $ is signifying the following numbers refer to money. And people can write it differently than they say it. I will say “June 1st” much, much more often than “the 1st of June”, but I will also almost always write it “01 June <YEAR>”.
But the reason it is much more common in the USA to write dates as “June 1, <YEAR>” is because that is how it is often spoken here. That doesn’t need to be consistent across other speech and writing patterns, it’s just how it developed. Probably goes back to the printing press like a lot of the other oddities in writing here…