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The grammar police have a point: you don’t say your birth year is "one thousand nine hundred fifty three" if you were born in 1953. So let’s kick off this New Year right and discard the superflous "two thousand" in our nomenclature for the year. Just say "twenty-ten!"
The National Association of Good Grammar – essentially a guy named Tom Torriglia and some friends who also paid attention in English class – say people have been mispronouncing the year for 10 years.
"NAGG is here to put everybody back on the correct path," Torriglia said by phone from his home in San Francisco. "We lost the battle when we went from 1999 to 2000 – but now we’re hoping to win the war."
The "20" should have been pronounced "twenty" all along, he said, pointing out that every year in the 20th century was pronounced "nineteen something."
" ‘Twenty’ follows ‘nineteen.’ ‘Two thousand’ does not follow ‘nineteen.’ It’s logical."
Probably the challenge has something to do with Americans hardly ever using the almost archaic term "aught" for "zero." (And don’t get me started on "zed!" — which means "Z" for pete’s sake.)
"It was never ‘two thousand nine’ for me," he sighed. "It was always ‘twenty aught nine.’ "
So the people hawking next year’s car models, the newscasters on TV and anyone else with a reason to say "2010" aloud should embrace good grammar and say "twenty ten" right now, Torriglia said.
As long as one guy gets to make rules like this, I’d like to rule right now on the name of the decade. Many Twits have called the new decade "The Tweens" (too cute) or "The Teens" (not really, since it will be three long years until a year with ‘teen’ in its name). Neither of these works as a name for the entire decade.
The only term that applies to the entire decade? Every year until 2020 begins with One, so it’s the best name.
The Onesies.
Please start calling this decade The Onesies, okay?
Update: This Facebook group is dedicated to the proposition that "twenty-ten" sounds cooler. So there’s that.
65 Comments
The previous decade, of course, is properly referred to as “The Naughties.”
I like that, Doc.
The onesies it is! Though I wonder if the teens won’t be adopted, seems like we may have some growing pains this decade.
Last decade was the zilch decade, this one is the teens.
The roaring twosies? Don’t think so.
I hope this is the decade of popular revolution, just as the zero decade was devoted to transferring wealth and power to the top.
Funny how the zero decade started with the theft of the presidency.
Happy new year Teddy!
Senator Webb [do like the sound of that, still] called the previous years Twenty Oh Seven, Twenty Oh Eight, etc
Typical Jar Head
The first reporter I recall saying it, in 2001, was Bill whats-his-name, the older gentleman on CNN who talks about polling. He was quite adamant about it, and actually corrected his co-workers on-air for a while. Not sure he’s still at the network, though. Schneider?
Boy, the cynics jumped all over the last thread, what will they do with this????
But, but, these are onesies.
that’s exactly what I think of with “onesies”, and somehow baby underwear just doesn’t work, except maybe for David Vitter. Second decade of the 21st century, does that suggest a nickname until “teens” is actually descriptive?
I’ve been calling the previous decade the Naughties since 2000.
Happy New Year, Teddy!
sorry I missed the sacred Zed, but a belated happy ‘eensies ;)
Hello Kirk!
Syncronicity. I just started watching the sequel to 2001: A Space Odysey.
2010.
I’ve been saying the oughties. Just sayin’, I been sayin’ that.
,
hi Mary – happy new year!
Been there. Not ready just yet to re-do it again.
But, then, I guess if it happens, I’d have to adapt.
Happy New Year, Loo Hoo.
Happy New Year, Sweets! And to all Pups. (((Teddy)))
“Please start calling this decade The Onesies, okay?”
No.
The teens,
But this year, the next one, and the one after than aren’t Teens at all. We don’t actually have a Teen year until 2013. Which is why people are calling them the Tweens, except that won’t work in 2013. And you can’t have a decade with two names, like Greg Craig.
Onesies it is, at least in this comment thread. *g*
help, help we are being oppressed…
[edit: make that "repressed".]
Now we see the violence inherent in the typos.
Yeah Synoia is right, this is the teens.
We live in an abbreviated society now. Words are too difficult to text. I don’t know that uniformity is going to help our situation very much, but I’ll try. I am going with 2XM, or XXM if anyone disapproves of my brevity.
I have decided I will say “twenty hundred ten”, because the previous centuries were the eighteen hundreds (1800s) and the nineteen hundreds (1900s). Yes, it’s inefficient, but it has an air of elegance to it. We need more elegance.
i agree we need more elegance, ph. but “twenty hundred”?????? i dunno.
Oh come on, it works. The next century will likely be the “twenty-one hundreds”.
twenty one hundreds sounds good. to me. but i’ll be dead so it’s kinda mute as the lawyers say. i’ll tell ya the truth, i don’t know elegance if it hits me in the face. if you say “the twenty hundreds” is elegant, i’ll take your word.
I don’t think English will be the dominant language by the year 2100.
How do you say 2100 in Chinese?
Elegance would be nice. The idea of elegance now is some airhead who is half dressed and has the intelligence of a cabbage.
Teddy!
Deux mille dix…
happy new year everybody. another sober new years and another sober year.
i’m honestly looking forward to this year and not just in a “it couldn’t be any worse” kind of way.
i’m gonna see if i can watch some football and baasketball on tee bee.
Twenty ten it is, Teddy.
And speaking of getting it right, driftglass nails it.
Teddy, I agree with you, twenty-ten is much better. Imagine Zagar and Evans singing “In the year two thousand five hundred twenty-five.” Impossible!!
Excellent example!
Poetry and song will be much sadder if we go another decade with “thousand” in the year-name.
” ‘Twenty’ follows ‘nineteen.’ ‘Two thousand’ does not follow ‘nineteen.’ It’s logical.,” Torriglia says.
It would only be “logical” if we were celebrating New Year’s for year 20.
Mr. Torriglia seems to confuse “grammer” with “usage,” and wants to impose his personal preference on everyone’s usage.
“Two thousand ten” works for me, and it’s not the least big ungrammatical, just my personal preference.
I guess it’s no surprise how illiterate and uncritical the press has become about everything, including the New Year’s Day fodder they drum up.
Tomato, tomahto … nitpicker!
But if we got through two hundred years of ’18′ and ’19′, then there’s really nothing wrong with ’20′.
Okay, Teddy:
Twenty Ten!
Noticed today that the Brits are referring to the era, 2000-2009 as the Naughties. I rather like that.
Perfect.
Thanks for giving us the label. Too bad, like most people, you seem to be confused as to when the new decade starts.
2010=30
So why don’t we call this year 30? Next year, 2011, can be 31…and so on until 2019 will be 39. Then in 2020 we’ll have to stage a new contest for what to call that decade and the numbers within that decade.
For me the first decade of this century is the “Zeroes”. Nothing good came of it, nothing was accomplished. Zeroes.
Except that in the English speaking world (that apparently doesn’t include the USA) “aught” means everything and “naught” means nothing. Always has.
(Merriam Webster definition of AUGHT)
Thus, as Evil Dr. Puma @1 and Sara @39 pointed out, the first decade of the century is referred to in England, Australia, New Zealand and Canada as “The Naughties.” I rather like it too.
I used to just sign my checks with the last digit, ie. 10/20/9, but I am kind of a geek.
I am fully onboard with TwentyTen, though, I may just use the ten.
How’s 1/12/ten?
@44: From which non-English-speaking country do you come? “Aught” is an old word for “anything,” not for “everything.”
The last decade was the Decade of Darkness.
One can only hope that the next will be better (if it isn’t, we’re hosed).
Oh God, it’s Y2K all over again….
But suppose we abandon one arbitrary date [the birth of Christ] and choose another instead [the birth of the universe].
Now all we have to do is 1] figure out exactly when the Big Bang occured and 2] figure out what time [and space] meant before that.
there are a couple of absolute callenders but they all have some kind of arbitrary starting point. even the holocene callender, wherein its the year 12,010, has a kind of arbitrary start because none can pin point the year the ice age ended. and of course, it didnt end in a single year, and certainly not on the last day of that year.
I think we should name the decade “George,” and we could hug it and pet it and squeeze it and…”
No, some of us have to say “two thousand ten” that way everyone knows Im from the 20th century. Like my great grandparents , who were from the 19th century, and used to say “nineteen hundred and etc.., as in “i remember that in nineteen hundred and thirty eight” so on..
I like the idea of using the birth of the universe as Day 1 of Year 1. The only problem I foresee is being able to write the date in the small space on my checks. Maybe scientific notation?
Their logic is screwy. “Nineteen hundred” is not the same number as “nineteen”.
NOBOY who counts says “Twenty hundred and 10″ … the prefix doesn’t start being “Twenty” until 2100. Any time I’ve ever counted, it’s “Two Thousand Ninety Nine” then “Twenty One Hundred”. Not that it matters, but they aren’t really being grammatically correct IMO.
Wait. Now my head hurts. Someone called “kgb” is being logical. Are you Putin me on?
I’m going for the Roman “MMX”. Classsically simple and shorter.
No matter what we call it, most likey it will be just as bad if not worse than the last ten years.
You see we haven’t fixed even one of our problems.
Problems are funny little things, when You don’t fix them they become worse.
All of the things that plagued the last decade are still there, except different people are doing the same things.
Look, one way or another, Historians are going to have to call the era in which they specialize by a name. Those who design History courses at the University Level will have to put something in the catalogue, snd in doing so they will define periodization, if you want to get into a long and difficult Marxist Debate.
If Historians want to be slightly internationalist, they will have to get away from naming eras after American Presidents. Somehow we manage to not call the 1790′s the Washington Era — we term it early Federalist. We have managed to term the 1920′s the “roaring 20′s” but not the age of Coolidge. Personally, I am quite persuaded by the British Historian, Eric Hobsbawm to group everything between 1914 through 1991 as “The Age of Extremes” which he otherwise calls, the short twentieth century.
I object to anything that allows the evolution toward a term such as the “Age of Bush” — I wish to avoid that memorialization. I prefer the notion of “Naughties” simply because that’s a good thing to call both Bush and Cheney and perhaps many others until we finally come up with the generalizing thesis that unifies things.
Not enough time has passed to really know whether 9/11 really is a useful break-point in history that requires different periodization. Too early to tell even though claims are made.
In the end, the point is in which era are you fairly well read? How do you construct the bookends?
Not every year in the twentieth century began with 19. 2000 was its last year. And this first decade of the 21st century still has one year to go.
And yes it matters! If you want to discard science and mathematics in favor of popular misconception, we’re no better than Palin.
Yes, many of us well remember that vigorous young president elected in the 1950s. Or that movie actor elected president in the 1970s. Be as scientific as you like to pretend you are; decades begin when their first name (number) changes. It’s simply common sense, despite a decade of silly nitpickers.
As I said, if you want to [Edited by Moderator. No need for insults] and follow the lemmings of popular misconception, go right ahead.
It’s not nitpicking. It’s getting it right. And it does matter.
Sorry, TeddyBear, but you’re wrong.
The numbers we use for years are ordinals and there was no Year Zero.
I know that people like Don and me got nowhere trying to teach you all how to count back around Jan 1, 2000, but that doesn’t make us wrong or you right.
Decades go from 1 to 10, not from 0 to 9.
Your naming of “decades” goes from 1 to 10. Decades actually go from 0 to 9.
Unless you are arguing that JFK was elected president in “the fifties” or that Ronald Reagan was elected president in “the seventies.” Yeah, I didn’t think so: 1960 is in the sixties; 1980 is in the eighties.
It’s the stupidest nitpickiest point I know otherwise intelligent people to insist on. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Year Zero.
Well I was born in ’53, and I don’t say my birth year is “nineteen fifty three” either. I say I was born in “fifty-three” (or “fifty-fucking-three” for an air of elegance someone mentioned upthread), and if someone can’t figure out the implied “nineteen,” fuck em. So analogously, how bout just “oh-ten,” as in following “oh-eight” and “oh-nine?” Would be nice to drop the “oh” for further brevity, but then it becomes ambiguous with the day-of-month and month.
Stephen Colbert uses oh-ten for this year, so there’s that.