Why are Months in Czech & Slovak Cultures Sometimes Shown in Roman Numerals

by Adam S on Tuesday, September 20, 2016

When running Spira or KronoDesk on certain versions of Windows, when using the Czech or Slovak culture settings (or using Server default when Windows is installed in those languages) you may get unusual formatted dates.

When displaying a list of artifacts in Spira or KronoDesk using the shorter date format dd-MMM-yyyy you will get the following in Czech and Slovak languages:

26-VII-2016 instead of 26-Jul-2016 (for July).

According to this article in Stack Overflow:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8730593/date-format-giving-roman-numeral-for-month-name

This is a design feature in Windows and Microsoft .NET (that Spira and KronoDesk are using) that due to a lack of standardized month abbreviations in those languages, Microsoft chose to use Roman numerals instead of textual abbeviations, which is a form that has been previously accepted in both countries in the past.

From the Microsoft Czech Style Guide (which is attached to this article for reference):

Country/region	Czech Republic
Calendar/Era	Gregorian
First Day of the Week	Monday
First Week of the Year	Week of January 1
Separator	period + non-breaking space
Default Short Date Format	d. M. yyyy
Example	17. 3. 2011
Default Long Date Format	d. MMMM yyyy (MMMM genitive)
Example	17. března 2011
Additional Short Date Format 1	d. R. yyyy (please see below for notes on the use of Roman numerals)
Example	17. III. 2011
Additional Short Date Format 2	N/A
Additional Long Date Format 1	d. MMMM yyyy (MMMM nominative; see notes for details)
Example	17. březen 2011
Additional Long Date Format 2	N/A
Leading Zero in Day Field for Short Date Format	No
Leading Zero in Month Field for Short Date Format	No
No. of digits for year for Short Date Format	4
Leading Zero in Day Field for Long Date Format	No
Leading Zero in Month Field for Long Date	No

Country/region	Czech Republic
Format
Number of digits for year for Long Date Format	4
Date Format for Correspondence	Long: d. MMMM yyyy (MMMM genitive)
Example	17. března 2011
Notes	· In Czech, dates are written in the day-month-year format. The month name is in genitive if functioning as an adverbial (i.e., answering the question "when?", "on which day?" - default long format). When the date performs the nominal function (name of a day, answering the question "which day?"), nominative is used, as indicated under Additional Long Format 1. Such use is however very rare and normally never applies to software. · The period after a number is always followed by a non-breaking space. (Required, not optional.) The year always consists of four digits. No leading zeros are used. · Day and month names do not take an initial capital in Czech. · If a date format includes a day name (or abbreviation thereof), there is a comma between the day name and the number: čtvrtek, 17. března 2011 · The use of Roman numerals to indicate months is obsolete and considered archaic but acceptable in Czech. It should be used ONLY as a third alternative to the Long and Short formats, where the US software would offer abbreviated month names (such as Jan, Oct, etc.), and ONLY if there is no other possibility to use one of the other two formats. Abbreviating month names in Czech is not acceptable.
Abbreviations in Format Codes	d is for day, number of d's indicates the format (d = digits without leading zero, dd = digits with leading zero, ddd = the abbreviated day name, dddd = full day name) M is for month, number of M's gives number of digits. (M = digits without leading zero, MM = digits with leading zero, MMM = the abbreviated name, MMMM = full name) R is for month expressed as uppercase Roman numeral (for example X = October) y is for year, number of y's gives number of digits (yy = two digits, yyyy = four digits)

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Why are Months in Czech & Slovak Cultures Sometimes Shown in Roman Numerals

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