Americans, why do you call it "4th of July" when you write date formats "Month/Day" supposedly because you all say "July 4th"?

submitted by teelo from self.AskSaidIt

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[–]Zero_1 8 insightful - 3 fun8 insightful - 2 fun9 insightful - 3 fun -  (5 children)

July 4th sounds lile july 5th or 6th. It's not special at all. 4th of july indicates its a special occasion.

[–]teelo[S] 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

Do you say "25th of December" for christmas day?

[–]theFriendlyDoomer 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Only if we add the article "the" to it. After all, we've heard "remember, remember, the 5th of November."

In practice, since we have Christmas and Christmas Eve, and there is only one of each, we would probably never have need to say it. With that said, I'm pretty sure you don't say "the Christmas" unless it needs to move into the adjective slot with something like "I love that I get off for the Christmas Holiday."

[–]teelo[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

But you don't say "the independence day" either.

[–]theFriendlyDoomer 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Right, just like we don't say "the Christmas." It becomes a proper noun.

Whereas if we moved stuff around "the day of independence" would be required.

[–]C3P0 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Do you say "25th of December" for christmas day?

Yes.

[–]The_Lear_Bluce_Ree 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

We say both. Informally most people just call it "the 4th".

[–]theFriendlyDoomer 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

We say the fourth of July. Because we've added the article, we default back to the normal grammar in our shared language of putting the an adjective before a noun. Makes you wonder why we otherwise have the calendar convention -- but it is what it is. If you look at a calendar, a date is something you can literally point to. So it is easy for our brain to treat it as a noun -- or rather the combination of this fact and the cultural conditioning that is having a language makes us used to parsing it that way. But the holiday itself, is not the calendar item. So it's either "the July 4th holiday" or "the 4th of July" -- and people are almost always going to take the easier route.

Just thinking about how we use it, we mainly flex into calling it the 4th of July when we are talking about it in the capacity of a holiday. An American putting it on the calendar could say something like "what are our plans for July 4th?"

Contrast this with when we talk about it as a holiday, like "what is your favorite food for the fourth of July?"

[–]teelo[S] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

But why do you refer to the holiday by its date rather than the actual name of the holiday?

[–]PostmodernJukebox 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

a lot of us consider "the 4th of july" another name for the holiday not just a descriptor of the date....

[–]theFriendlyDoomer 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I am just conjecturing here, but I think we don't say Independence Day much out of some combination of the U.K. being one of strongest allies on the one hand and a desire to be strong and ergo never "dependent" on the other. I'm pretty sure it used to be more common to say Independence Day.

[–]CreativeFlesh 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I’m thinking it’s because they use the correct format DD/MM/YYYY for important things :p

[–]xigoi 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Excuse me, but the only correct format is YYYY-MM-DD.

[–]robo1p 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

ISO 8601 gang

[–]m68k 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

^ This is the correct answer. :3

[–]NorfolkTerrier 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

All dates can technically be said either way in American English. It's not wrong to say "the 5th of May," but it sounds a lot more formal.

[–]galaxybrain 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I too have wondered this.

[–]Workingdays 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They were still using proper English back then.