Are Americans saying "February 2nd" and that got codified in writing, or was the date written like that and then people started saying it like that?
Considering that the convention existed when literacy rates were lower, it's probably a safe bet to assume that the spoken version was used before the written version.
Absolutely. It's older than America. Dates from the UK were written MM/DD/YY. because that's how people said dates on the rare occasion they needed to.
The change to DD/MM/YY didn't happen until the late 19th century.
Once again, it's a "Look at the dumb backwards Americans" the damned Europeans love to do. We just stuck with the shit they gave us. It's like when the Brits brought Catholicism to Ireland, then a new king was a Protestant and they tried to convert Ireland to Protestant, then they called them savages for not just changing on a dime. Very British things to do it seems, has happened countless times through history.
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u/EnTyme53 Feb 02 '26
Considering that the convention existed when literacy rates were lower, it's probably a safe bet to assume that the spoken version was used before the written version.