Trivial question for people from the UK

Post Reply New Topic

How exactly are calendar dates usually pronounce in everyday life? Is it spoken as 'Thursday, the ninth of November, two thousand and/twenty eleven' or something else? I ask because dates are usually written with the day first (9 November 2011) there, whereas in the US the date's usually written with the month first (Thursday, November 9, 2011) and spoken that day (eg Thursday, November [the] ninth, two thousand [and]/twenty eleven'). Are commas usually used to separate the weekday & the date as well as the month & year like US folks do?

I'm from the US but usually speak a full date as 'Thursday, the ninth of November, two thousand and eleven' and write it as Thursday, 9 November 2011; 2011 November 9 (Thursday); or 2011-11-09; or 2011 Nov 9 (Thu) or Thu, 9 Nov 2011. I think writing or speaking a full date starting with the month is illogical and writing a numeric date in any order besides YYYY-MM-DD can easily confuse people who travel or are on-line. Plus, YYYY-MM-DD sorts easily on computers & is easier to look at when looking at a list of dates.

There's no particular convention. You could say either "the tenth of November, 2011" or "November the tenth, 2011" or (rarely but with increasing frequency, because it's being pushed by advertising as the cool, American way to say it) "November tenth, 2011."
Dates are conventionally written as the Dth of the Mth YYYY, so 10th 11th 2011.

Usually I say it "November t'tenth" and have done with it and write it "10 November".

Why do you ask?

And pronouncing "November 10th" sounds so, clunky and, well, American. Yeuch.

Yeah, anyway, in the UK it's always date, month, year when writing.

'Remember, remember the fifth of November' is the first line of our Bonfire Night ditty & illustrates what you've already mentioned, that we tend to say 'the 1st of January, two thousand and twelve' (or twenty-twelve, but that sounds lazy IMO & will only be acceptable once we're in the teens).

UK convention in short notation is to have Day-Month-Year, rather than month first, as like you I find it confusing to put the medium term period of time first, when it should be the longest or the shortest. However I find the differences with US are enjoyable as historical quirks as long as the differences remain. As Ambivalence said, things tend to get pushed into Americanisms, perhaps due to the preponderance of film & tv (not to mention the internet) influencing common usage. That is annoying as the UK can only be a bad imitation of the US, so it should concentrate on being a better version of the UK (or constituent countries thereof). In speaking however I think there are more 'month the day' forms than in writing, but it still feels affected.

Comma-wise, definitely one after the day of the week, but not one before the year if it's in a letterhead, otherwise before year too.

It's quite irritating to have software / notations in differing formats, as unless I know what it's supposed to be in I can infer a wrong date from the display.

We use software from multiple sources/specialist companies & getting the correct date & time is crucial. I find I have to scan down a list of entries to see if a number higher than 12 occurs in the first portion pr second and so judge if it's UK format or not.
But switching between multiple applications on different pieces of kit that I may not have looked at for months and so can't remember so have to keep checking each time is such a faff. And don't get me started on default dictionary settings for MS spellchecker...

It is a bit varied. In writing the order is definitely day - month - year. Reversing day & month stands out a mile as American. but I have seen any of those at one point or another:
05/05/2011
5/05/2011
5/5/2011
5//5/11 (!)
Or all the above separated by hyphen instead of by oblique.
That would be at the bottom of a document, together with a signature.

If I was sending out an email to suggest various dates to someone to choose from I'd either list them, but more likely I'd write, Currently, I can offer you 10, 17, and 18 May 2011.

Saying it is another matter. I might say, let's have a meeting on Monday, 12th of May at 4pm. But I might stick in a 'the' before 12th. In an email I would probably leave out the 'the. Saying May 12th or May the 12th would be really rare it not unheard of.

I would say two thousand and eleven. I agree with the poster who said we might start saying twenty something when we get to 2013. Except that the media keep saying twenty twelve when referring to the Olympic Games in London. This has caught on a bit.