Date and time notation in the Philippines

Since the Philippines has not officially adopted any time and date representation standard based on the ISO 8601, notation practices across the country are in various, customary formats.

Date

In casual settings, alphanumeric date formats are usually written with a middle-endian order (month-day-year) in a way similar to that of the United States.^[1] Another format, the little-endian order (day-month-year) is applied primarily by the military and the police, although it is also used for more formal civil uses such as government memorandums, a number of tertiary-level educational institutions such as the University of the Philippines system, and business databases for companies that deal with non-East Asian clients. Other minor applications of the little-endian format include certificates, plaques, trophies and expiration dates.^[2]

Since there is no law mandating the date order, minimum or maximum length, or format (i.e. alphanumeric or numeric), notations sometimes vary from office to office, in private and public sectors. Such can be observed in passports issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs, which particularly notate the date numerically as MM-DD-YY, and in house bills or executive orders dated alphanumerically with a MMMM-DD-YYYY format. The little-endian (day-month-year) date format is always written alphanumerically by default to avoid confusion.

Hyphens (‐) and forwardslashes (/) are the most common separators for a numeric date format. The use of periods (.) are almost exclusively used for expiration dates that are normally written in the alphanumeric day-month-year format. On the other hand, an alphanumeric date in month-day-year format instead uses spacing and a comma between the day and year. The day-month-year variant likewise does not necessarily require a comma between the month and year.

On tech devices (such as PCs, mobile phones and tablets), it uses the little-endian order by default (with the release of Microsoft Windows 10 and iOS 9 respectively) despite its minimal usage in the country. Prior to that, they were use the middle-endian order by default.

Below are date format variations typically used in the Philippines:

The following date format variations are less commonly used:

In Tagalog and Filipino, however, the day-month-year notation is the format as adapted from the Spanish. The ordinal prefix ika is applied on the day first as in ika-31 ng Disyembre, 2015 (English: 31st of December 2015). The month-day-year format is also used, albeit rarely and more for Spanish recitation. The English-based formats (Disyembre 31, 2015 or especially in the military, 31 Disyembre 2015) are used but are still read in the Tagalog day-month-year notation.

Weekday name and month abbreviations are usually the three or full digit letters of the word (Weekday abbreviated names: Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat—Months: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec). Both English-Philippine and Tagalog-Philippine calendars mostly show Sunday (or Monday) as the first day of the week.

Time

The Philippines uses the 12-hour notation in most oral or written communication, whether formal or informal. A colon (:) is used to separate the hour from the minutes (12:30 p.m.). The use of the 24-hour notation is usually restricted in use among airports, the military, police and other technical purposes.

Spoken Conventions

Numerical elements of dates and the time may pronounced using either their Spanish names or vernacular ones; the former is somewhat pedestrian whilst the latter tends to be longer, formal and academic.

Examples:

Date: 12/15/2015

• Spanish-derived: Disyembre akinse, dos mil kinse (Spanish: A-quince de diciembre, dos mil quince)
• English-derived: Disyembre kinse, dos mil kinse (also in use)
• Tagalog: Ika-labinlima(ng araw) ng Disyembre dalawang libo't labing-lima

Time: 8:30 p.m.

• Spanish-derived: Alas otso imedya ng gabi (Spanish: A las ocho y media; note ng gabi as vernacular designation for in the evening)
• Tagalog: Tatlumpu (minuto/sandali) makalipas ikawalo ng gabi

See also

• Date and time representation by country
• Internationalization and localization

References