This is quite interesting, especially the comments, from Ben Yagoda's blog - Not One Off Britishisms:

http://britishisms.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/european-date-format/

@porsche - 'the modern world' - does that mean the modern world is restricted to North America? As far as I know, this expression is used nowhere else (for a starter we say 'kerb' in the UK, and so presumably in Australia, NZ etc). The rest of the modern world may have similar laws, but not that particular expression.

@jayles - the problem with that is that Monday can be used in all sorts of ways as a noun, not just in expressions such as I'll see you (on) Monday - using your formula, the results for British books and American books are pretty similar, whereas in practice that's obviously not the case.

Here are a couple of different ways of doing it:

you (on) Monday
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=you+on+Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%2Cyou+Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%2Cyou+on+Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012%2Cyou+Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cyou%20on%20Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cyou%20Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cyou%20on%20Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cyou%20Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012%3B%2Cc0

takes place (on) Monday
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=takes+place+on+Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%2Ctakes+place+Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%2Ctakes+place+on+Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012%2Ctakes+place+Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ctakes%20place%20on%20Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ctakes%20place%20Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ctakes%20place%20on%20Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012%3B%2Cc0

starts (on) Monday
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=starts+on+Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%2Cstarts+Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%2Cstarts+on+Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012%2Cstarts+Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cstarts%20on%20Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cstarts%20Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cstarts%20on%20Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cstarts%20Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012%3B%2Cc0

Just to forestall any misunderstandings - kerb (BrE) = curb (AmE), so both Hairy Scot and Dyske are right on that one.

The best practice is, of course, to encourage waiting or any other serving staff to use their own language rather than a formulaic question, whatever the question is. John Cleese used to be involved in an educational TV company, and in one programme on retail sales suggested there were two questions sales staff should never ask a customer - "Can I help you?" and "Who's next?"

I also remember a management guru suggesting that in a McDonalds in Bristol, for example, they shouldn't be saying "HI, how are you today" (which makes absolutely no sense to a Brit when it comes from a complete stranger), but rather "Hello my lovely, what can I get you?" or something to that effect.

@HS - math is simply American for maths:

Funnily enough the earliest examples of maths I can find are from the first volume of the American Educational Journal, dated 1864, where teachers advertise the subjects they offer. There don't seem to be any instances of math here.

'Do the math' also appears to be a specifically American idiom (first example in Google Books 1938) - much more common in American books than 'Do the arithmetic' or 'Do the sums'. It's simply a matter of one being more idiomatic in one branch of English, and another in another - a case of East, West, hame's best, perhaps.

@HS - I referred to PP as his comments are now labelled Hairy Scot, so I naturally assumed you were one and the same person; I'm sorry for your loss. As for 'yeah right' I think you're being a little sensitive; it's fairly mild in normal conversation, given the right intonation - a bit on a par with 'pull the other one'. And I did add a smiley later on. But sorry that I offended you.

I don't think 'these damned Americanisms sent to plague us' is exactly a charming remark either (and is by no means the first time you've had a dig at American English), nor are your dismissive remarks on common usage, but I've no doubt it was all meant tongue-in-cheek. Am I not allowed similar licence? Is it only OK to be critical if you use strong formal language, but not if you use an informal everyday expression? And more generally:

Why don't we use 'thee and thou' any more? - Common usage
Why do we now use progressive / continuous verb forms, almost unknown is Shakespeare's day? - Common usage
Why don't English nouns have case or gender (which they did have in OE)? - Common usage

Common usage is exactly how we've got to where we've got to today - it refers to the whole of the development of English, not just to some recent period (usually since people's schooldays) when English is sometimes perceived to have gone to the dogs.

@Hairy Scot - "just another damned Americanism sent to plague us" - yeah, right!

"to seeke some other place of stay and refuge, the better of which two choices, did carry with it the appearance of worse then one thousand deaths." - The World Encompassed, Sir Francis Drake, 1652

"Mr. Conflans had two choices, either to fly, or to stand and sight it out" - Edmund Burke, 1760

"There were two choices before the admirals for his course to the Havannah. The first, and most obvious, was the common way, to keep to the south of Cuba, and fall into the track of the palleons" - Sir Edmund Seymour, 1764

"We have only two choices; either to submit to the present, impositions, or demand the treatment proper for men." - from a Maidstone pamphleteer, quoted in William Cobbett's Annual Register, 1819

"My truly, she has gude cause to speak weel 0' him, was't only for the song he made about her the verra night before his auld surly uncle gae him the twa choices—-Jamaica, or the windy side 0' the ha' door" - Scots Magazine, 1822

".. you have but two choices — the ostracism or the throne" - Edward Bulwer- Lytton, 1837

We got choice from French, and it can be used exactly the same way in French:

"Nous ne voyons que deux choix qui auraient réellement quelque importance par eux-mêmes; l'un est un fils de l'infant don Carlo, l'autre est un prince de la maison d'Orléans" - Revue des deux mondes, 1834

"C'est entre ces deux choix que la grande famille humaine est appelée à se décider" - Benjamin Laroch, 1829

"Mais il paraît qu'il restait deux choix entre lesquels flottait l'esprit de madame de Grignan, deux choix que madame de Sévigné appelait deux extrémités." - Madame de Sevigné, 1862

'that have crept into our language through "common usage" - that's how languages develop - people were speaking and writing English (eg Shakespeare) quite successfully for centuries before the first non-usage-based grammar appeared (Dr Lowth 1762) - the first grammars, such as those by Ben Jonson (c.1600) and Joseph Priestley (1761) were almost entirely based on "common usage". It was only when Lowth and co started to try to 'make sense' of perfectly good idiomatic English, (and sometimes couldn't) that they started inventing all their silly rules.

Some of us are proud to belong to the common people and are infinitely happier that in a democracy our language is governed by common usage rather than by a self-appointed language elite. I really can't see why you put it into inverted commas as though it was some sort of dirty expression. That's just the sort of thing that PP would have done - "pearls before swine" indeed! :)

I really recommend you read Joseph Priestley's Rudiments of Grammar 1761.

@Peter Reynolds - Thanks.

Just to add to what Hairy Scot and Brus have said, I would have said just the same as with curb anything else:

curb your temper
curb inflation
curb the spread of the disease

But as 'Curb your dog' is not an expression I was aware of (I don't think it's used in the UK), I had a quick look at Google Images, and it is clear that it is used specifically to mean control your dog's toilet habits, not simply control it's behaviour:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22curb+your+dog%22&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=DI4fU5XpNYqX5AT_xYCYDw&ved=0CDMQsAQ&biw=1018&bih=595