The complaint isn't about the particular other order, but the fact that the order is ambiguous. In this case that doesn't matter, but often it does.
Americans memorize inches and yards, and often also memorize centimeters and meters, and working with either is fine, but we're not so often faced with numbers where it might be inches or centimeters and we have to figure out which (and when we are, it's sometimes a pain - certainly a bigger pain that working with known units).
Or, working with your language analogy, please go fetch me some "pasta" without knowing whether I'm speaking Italian or Polish.
Americans memorize inches and yards, and often also memorize centimeters and meters, and working with either is fine, but we're not so often faced with numbers where it might be inches or centimeters and we have to figure out which (and when we are, it's sometimes a pain - certainly a bigger pain that working with known units).
Or, working with your language analogy, please go fetch me some "pasta" without knowing whether I'm speaking Italian or Polish.