It took me some time to figure out, but if anybody has the same problem as me here is one way to do it. The American date format is not always practical and I found a way to set the format in the dictionary. Create a dictionary item Article.OnDateFormat and change line 45 in partial view latestArticlesRow.cshtml to

@Umbraco.GetDictionaryValue("Article.On") @article.ArticleDate.ToString(@Umbraco.GetDictionaryValue("Article.OnDateFormat"))

Then it is possible to have all the date formats needed