Comment on Pi Day
Dasus@lemmy.world 3 months ago4th OF July,
So date first, then the month?
You don’t read 1/2 as “1slash2” do you? You read it as “half”, don’t you? You don’t read 3/4 as “three four” do you? You read it as “three quarters” or “three fourths”.
Because we know how to conjugate numbers from context. Like say you finish 3. in a race. Would you read “3.” as “three” or “third”?
(It’s quite ironic how often I end up having to teach Americans English, lol.)
I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Who would even type it that way? When talking about position, the suffix isn’t ignored, either in text or speech.
As for fractions, they are just that; fractions. Divisible portions of a whole, so different rules apply to them. They can be in the plural sense as in two halves, or 3 quarters. But you don’t have a plural dates of the month, unless you’re counting multiple years. And in that case it’s month first. Like, if you were comparing this year to other years, you wouldn’t say “this was better than the last couple 4ths of July”. You’d say, “this was better than the last couple of July 4ths”
Dasus@lemmy.world 3 months ago
You’ve never seen people use ordinal numbers?
Never seen rankings of say, hand-egg players, put down as
?
“Ordinal” as in “by order” rather than cardinal numbers. In the middle of a a sentence you’d write “third” preferably, but you might also use “3rd”. My grammatically wrong sentence was on purpose to demonstrate that you can — or at least should be able to — read ordinal numbers.
Just like you’d read 04.06.24 as “the fourth of July, 2024”. Well, you wouldn’t, you’d read that “the sixth of April”, but only because you’re using the stupid system for dates.
“as in two halves or 3 quarters”
Why didn’t you write “three”? Were you omitting more letters because you knew I would be able to read “3” as “three”? Yes. Good. We do that for other numerals as well, and depending on the context, you add things like “of” in between them. Where’d you get the word “quarter” when I just wrote down “4”?
Thus it’s fourth of July, not “four July”.
GiveMemes@jlai.lu 3 months ago
That’s not Grammer though? That has nothing to do with how the english language works and everything to do with a nebulous idea of understanding.
Dasus@lemmy.world 3 months ago
It is.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar
“everything to do with a nebulous idea of understanding.”
What do you think language is?