When is your birthday?

Differences in American and English phrasal choices creep up in surprising places. One such incident happened the other day whilst at work with the boys group in Blacon. The presenter from an organisation asked for me to gather the first and last names as well as the birthdays of the students involved in the project. Sounds simple enough. When I went around the group and asked the first boy, we'll call him James, the exchange went something like this:

Me: When is your birthday?
James: '13th of the 2nd'.
Me: 'huh? What's your birthday?'
James: '13th of the 2nd'.
Me: 'Right, so February 13th, what year?'

Now here is where he may have responded with the fact that his birthday is every year, but he was nicer or not as quick and said his actual year of birth but not before saying:

James: 'huh?'
Me: 'In what year were you born?'
James: '1996'
Me: 'thanks.'

Very strange to compute verbal input in a format one is not accustomed. If I asked someone when his/her birthday is in the states, you often hear it formatted as such: 'February 26th' and then maybe 1982, if you asked the year. I knew that it is normal to do the whole day/month/year thing here. To be honest, I think it makes more sense, but it was STILL even after a year and a half a little difficult to compute. I think it was the 'of the 2nd' that really threw me off. I usually say, '26, 2, 1982' when asked my birthday here. I wonder if that throws other people off as well??

I like picking up these little tid bits. This one will fall into the same category as omitting the first person pronoun and leaving the direct object off the end of a sentence. It just seems to make one more easily understood round here. '(I) can do (that)'. We will see how many of these practices surreptitiously crept into my vernacular over the past few months. Ta.