Sunday, January 3, 2010

2010 or 2010?

Now that we're finally in the second decade of the 21st century, I have a question. Is the new year two thousand ten or twenty ten?

For the young ones who are rapidly growing up without memories of the previous century, we used to call the years nineteen whatever, as in nineteen seventy-six, not one thousand nine hundred seventy-six.

7 comments:

  1. The second decade starts one year from now.

    And I like twenty-ten much better. :)

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  2. George, thanks for the comment. I can go with twenty-ten or (with WorBlux) two thousand ten.

    I must disagree with you however on when the new decade started. In a narrow technical sense, you are right, though it's important to remember that even in that sense the case is not open and shut. The mistake was in the original calculation of when Jesus was born and in the failure to include the year zero. 1BC (or 1 BCE) is followed by 1 AD.

    Did anyone really celebrate the start of the new millennium on January 1 2001? Do people consider 1970 part of the decade of the 60's? Or 1980 as part of the 1970's?

    On this one I go with Stephan Jay Gould, who said that what we should do is just admit that the first "century" had only 99 years.

    Of course we can speak of cultural "decades" too, e.g, the 1960's started on November 22, 1963 and ended with Watergate.

    ReplyDelete
  3. People will tend to say the one with fewer syllables unless there is a significant improvement in word flow. For 2010, the difference is 3 vs 4 with little flow difference IMO, so I expect you'll hear both often. I think it will shift towards "twenty ___" as we move deeper into the century.

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  4. A while ago, I considered that, in the past - during the 1970s, let's say - people would refer to the individual years of the twenty-first century as `twenty-[year]': twenty-25 or twenty-oh-two, say.

    But when these years actually came to pass, everyone always called them `two-thousand-[year]': two-thousand-one, two-thousand-eight.

    I'm not sure how old you are, but I remember oldsters when I was young, they used to say, `back in nineteen-two', rather than `nineteen-oh-two' (but certainly never, `nineteen-hundred-and-two').

    Also, I must take issue with this statement -

    *I must disagree with you however on when the new decade started. In a narrow technical sense, you are right, though it's important to remember that even in that sense the case is not open and shut. The mistake was in the original calculation of when Jesus was born and in the failure to include the year zero. 1BC (or 1 BCE) is followed by 1 AD.*

    It is open and shut.

    A decade is ten years, period.

    The decade began in 2001 and will not end until Dec 31, 2010.

    When you count to ten you don't start at zero.

    Moreover, the reason that the Xian calendar starts at 1 is that, when anno domini was established, the western number system did not have zero; it would not have made sense in any case, to start at "0", if you ask me.

    But again, they started at 1, and so the 21st century didn't begin until 2001.

    This was well understood a century ago: the world celebrated the beginning of the twentieth century on Jan 1, 1901 (all except for the German empire...)

    thanks
    RB

    ReplyDelete
  5. RB, thanks for the comment. I think I still have to disagree with you on when the decade starts, however.


    A decade is ten years, period.

    Who said otherwise?


    When you count to ten you don't start at zero.

    Sure you do, at least when you're counting years, as from someone's birth, which is what our calender is supposedly based on. When someone celebrates their first birthday, one year of their life has already transpired. By the time they reach 10, they've completed a decade. The beginning of that year is actually their 11th.

    That's what we have when we count decades, so 2010 is the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century.

    But again, they started at 1, and so the 21st century didn't begin until 2001.

    Irrelevant. As Stephan Gould said, the first century was short a year, containing only 99.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I think it's important to remember tradition. Whether technically right or wrong, most people generally think of, say, Jan. 1st, 2010 as the beginning of a new decade. It's just what we do, and that is okay...no?

    To the argument that when we count from 1 to 10 we don't include zero, that is true...but we also don't go to 11. We stop at 10.

    Just a few thoughts.

    Oh, and, for whatever reason, I seem to refer to 2010 as two thousand and ten. I don't know why. It's the just the way I seem to say it.

    ReplyDelete

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