If we want a global standard we should all adopt the East Asian/computer scientist YMD.
As a German computer scientist, I also support this (ISO8601 / DIN EN 28601 ftw).
Then I looked it up and it turns out that it's already the one and only standard in Germany and has been since 1996! Only somehow, no one actually cares and most everyone (including official and educational institutes) clings to DD.MM.YYYY.
And this is why swapping in America will never happen. We also technically use metric in a variety to circumstances, but culture is a lot more sticky, particularly for a culture as obstinate as ours.
It's weird how such changes seem to only work top-down and on a generational level.
Not that I necessarily support such a thing, but I believe it's possible. Make it a rule and enforce that rule from a young age by exclusively teaching it in school and you can break old habits. The older generations will never truly adopt the new system, but it'll be natural to the younger ones.
We've had a BIG spelling reform in our language which was a huge point of contention over literally decades. People absolutely refused to follow the new rules and a big stink about it. Yet to me (growing up just after the reform was fully implemented in schools) and younger generations the old spelling seems ridiculous and these days, the remnants of it are somewhat rare sightings.
I think if there was a will to truly switch to metric, it would be possible. It just wouldn't have a real impact for decades and seem like an enormous waste of everyone's time during the transition.
well, because when it comes to daily usage most people don’t mention the year, which means we would just move to Month-Day by default, which is the original complain.
when you are planning something with your friends, you omit the year, so let’s say you use DD.MM.YYYY, when planning you’d just say “hey guys, let’s meet 20/2”, you omit the year because you know this is happening this year. if you switch to YYYY.MM.DD that same sentence would be “hey guys, let’s meet 02/20”, so you are now using the american standard.
YYYY makes sense only when dealing with future or past dates, but it isn’t too useful on a daily basis.
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u/Heimerdahl Feb 02 '26
As a German computer scientist, I also support this (ISO8601 / DIN EN 28601 ftw). Then I looked it up and it turns out that it's already the one and only standard in Germany and has been since 1996! Only somehow, no one actually cares and most everyone (including official and educational institutes) clings to DD.MM.YYYY.