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Eddie Gosik
08-19-1999, 05:02 AM
After reading tons of crap about the New Millenium (i.e. When does it actually start, etc.,etc.,etc.),my general thoughts are...you people need to GET A LIFE!
You can get as "technical" as you like...but for most of us, the New Millenium starts after the clock strikes 12 on Dec.31, 1999!
But what MY question is...is how exactly will we verbally refer to the year 2000, in 2001 and so on? And for that matter, the whole millenium after the clock strikes 12 on Dec.31,2999? Will we say,"yeah...I bought that car back in zero-zero."? And will we say..."Things got really nutz back in the Two-Thousands"? Or will we just refer to it as "Back in the 1st Millenium"? How did they refer to the year 00 back in 1902?

Doobieous
08-19-1999, 05:13 AM
i cant wait to see the other replys to this post LOL.

ChiefScott
08-19-1999, 07:09 AM
It's deja vu all over again! Double aught. "I graduated way back in double aught."

My $.02

AWB
08-19-1999, 08:15 AM
Eddie Gosik: But what MY question is...is how exactly will we verbally refer to the year 2000, in 2001 and so on?

"Turn of the Century" was a popular phrase. ("Turn of the Millenium"?)

What I want to know is when we'll refer to the upcoming years without prefixing "the year-" in front of it.

You can get as "technical" as you like...but for most of us, the New Millenium starts after the clock strikes 12 on Dec.31, 1999!

It's not quote-technical-unquote; it's the mathematical truth! You're confusing the "odometer" rolling over to 2000 as the end of 2000 years. It's actually marking the beginning of the 2000th year that won't be finished until 12/31/2000 23:59:59.999...

Now if we'd started with a year 0, you'd be right. But nope. 1 BC ended and 1 AD began.

There is a millenium that ends at 12/31/1999, which is the 1000's AD. But that is not the same as the 2nd Millenium AD.

Similarly, the 1990's will end, but the 200th Decade AD will continue to 12/31/2000.

GET A LIFE!
Get a math degree.

C K Dexter Haven
08-19-1999, 08:33 AM
I contend it's the odometer effect. Yes, mathematically the millenium don't begin until 1/1/2001, but the FUN is watching the odometer turn over and all the little 9's turn into 0's. (If you have a computer-generated odomoter, you don't get this thrill.)

It's the fun of tossing out all the checks or admin forms that say "19__" for the year.
It's the fun of not getting the date right on the checks you write for the first few month -- not just getting the last digit wrong (as usual in January) but getting the first friggin' digit wrong! It's the fun of a year that ends in 000, which hasn't happened for a thousand years (regardless of when we started counting, it is certainly 1000 years since the year 1000, and 100 years since the year 1900.)

So, the celebrations are not about the mathematics, IMHO, but about the odometer.

AWB
08-19-1999, 08:51 AM
CKDextHavn: I contend it's the odometer effect. Yes, mathematically the millenium don't begin until 1/1/2001, but the FUN is watching the odometer turn over and all the little 9's turn into 0's. (If you have a computer-generated odomoter, you don't get this thrill.)

Thank you. Yes, it's fun to watch the odometer roll over. When I was on a family vacation when I was 7 was when I noticed the little numbers changing under the speedometer. I got so involved that I didn't watch the scenery that my parent took us hundreds of miles to see. (So, what's so special about Yellowstone again?)

I especially liked how the numbers kind of "edge off" of a straight line as all the 9's appear.

My car has a @!#?@! LCD odometer. Just out of the blue, it clicks to the new miles. No fun at all.

Eddie Gosik
08-19-1999, 09:01 AM
Yada-yada-yada! Yeah...read all the stuff.
Understand it FULLY...
I agree...Your right.
But my question STILL ain't been answered here YET!
It was just simple "Average Joe" kinda inquiry. Not an invitation for every " Smug, Know-it-all" to excerise his "Vast knowlege of the Inner Workings of EVERYTHING"...
Just a simple "Wadda we gonna CALL it?!!!"

Mr Thin Skin
08-19-1999, 09:19 AM
It's not like there's a committee to decide this. Everything I've read has said that some popular usage would be used, but you'll just have to wait and see. I fear it will involve the use of the letter O, as in "oh one" for '01 instead of "zero one."

Eddie Gosik
08-19-1999, 09:29 AM
Finally...someone on the same wavelength!
Yeah...I figured the same for those years(01,02,03...), but what about da year after the clock turns? We gonna refer to it as "back in Oh-Oh's"? Or "The Turn" or something? Same for the 2000's in the year 3000.
"Back in the early Two-thousands"? Kinda sounds weird, no?
Just pondering here.

Carl Berry
08-19-1999, 09:34 AM
i think we will call a date like 4/19/00, "April 19th, two-thousand" & 5/9/01, "May 9th, Twenty -o- one" Most will say "20-"OH" one, but a few will insist upon "20-ZERO-1" the latter will bug me I'm sure! Most people at the time called 1900 "nineteen hundred" & 1901 "nineteen OUGHT one", But I don't look for "ought" to return.

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Zymurgist

kellibelli
08-19-1999, 09:35 AM
for christs sake, do NOT leave it up to the Canadians, or it will be the eighties, the nineties, and then the loonies or toonies or something!

Kelli, from Canada

TheNerd
08-19-1999, 09:49 AM
I hereby decree that the coming decade will be known as "the Naughties". As in, naught-one, naught-two...

:)

SkeptiJess
08-19-1999, 10:39 AM
"Zero-zero" as an abbrieviation, "two-thousand" as the year. At least that's what I'm hearing around here. I have also seen a few forms that insist on mo/da/year vice mo/da/yr (10/30/2000 vice 10/30/00), BTW. I'm of the opinion that we'll have to wait and see what drifts o the top of the usage pile after a few years. It's gonna sound odd for a while but, unless the world ends, I guess we'll get used to it.

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Jess
Full of 'satiable curtiosity

handy
08-19-1999, 10:51 AM
I notice that 'millenium' is metric, right?

Equivalent to a 'thousand.' It's Interesting for me to think of time in metric terms. Because of, for example, 60 minute hours, not 100 minute hours.

Roman numerals would be: MM ? Could someone check that for me?

Hello Again
08-19-1999, 11:58 AM
I have heard:

The aughts
the Oh-Oh's
The Zips
and my own personal fave:
the "oo's" (pronounced as in "ooooh, ahhhh")
(oo-1, oo-2, etc)

C K Dexter Haven
08-19-1999, 02:48 PM
<< Roman numerals would be: MM ? Could someone check that for me? >>

Yes, handy. Where have you been? Haven't you seen M&Ms advertise themselves as the Candy of the Millenium?

Markxxx
08-19-1999, 05:07 PM
The millenium no more starts on Jan 1, 2001 than it starts on Jan 1, 2000. Are you forgetting that we switched from the Julian to Gregorian calander? Did you take an adjustment to that effect? Did you also take in account that the new year one time started in March?

I'm much to lazy to do the math, but if someone wants to calculate these changes, (and if you look I'm sure you would find other changes in the calender we don't account for), it would be interesting to see the result.

pluto
08-19-1999, 05:46 PM
Changing to the Gregorian calendar does not affect the date of the millenium, in fact the reason the new calendar was adopted was so that we would use the correct date for holidays, especially Easter (why would the Pope care, otherwise?).

A millenium is a thousand years, that is one thousand orbits of the earth around the sun. We have adjusted the calendar a number of times. That has changed our bookkeeping but not, I repeat, not the number of years that have gone by. If you want to calculate the number of days in a thousand years (365,244+) and count forward from your starting date you can find the start date for the next millenium. Jan 1, 2000 will be the 730,123rd day since Jan 1, 0001 (the first day of the first millenium), still 365 days short of the first day of the third millenium.

Of course you've got to find your starting date ...

There is no question that the twenty-first century and the third millenium start in 2001. It's just that we like whole numbers so much we want to celebrate them.



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"non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem"

Sassy
08-19-1999, 05:53 PM
My vote for the naughties...

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The reason gentlemen prefer blondes is that there are not enough redheads to go around.

Robb
08-19-1999, 07:29 PM
Not an invitation for every " Smug, Know-it-all" to excerise his "Vast knowlege of the Inner Workings of EVERYTHING"...
But, it would have looked better for you if you spelled it millennium.

That second n seems to be the other Y2K problem.

handy
08-19-1999, 07:33 PM
I think people are going to say they were born in the year two thousand instead of the year zero zero.

manhattan
08-19-1999, 07:46 PM
Eddie, the answer is that you aren’t going to call those years anything at all. Haven’t you been reading the other threads? There will be no "after Dec. 31, 1999." And if there is, we're all going to be way too busy scrounging for electricity, sweeping up asteroid dust, saying "Hi" to God, and all that other stuff to have time to call it anything!

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Livin' on Tums, Vitamin E and Rogaine

lvick
08-19-1999, 08:17 PM
I favor the aughts, and I have the habit of breaking numbers into smaller groups, it facilitates my memory, so I'll probably say twenty aught zero, twenty aught one, twenty aught two. I can hear myself now, "Heh, heh, why you sniveling pup, I kin 'member back in the winter of 20 aught 1 we would've loved to had moldy bread to chew on."

Larry

Carl Berry
08-19-1999, 08:35 PM
I heard of the 1890's called "The Gay Ninetys" (no, not that gay), the 1920's called the "The Roaring Twenties" The 1950's, "The Faboulus Fifties", but what are the 1900's, 1910's, 30's '40's, 60's, 70's, 80's & 1990's called? Will the 1990's be "the gay 90's?" (yes, that guy) ??

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Zymurgist

Carl Berry
08-19-1999, 08:36 PM
I heard of the 1890's called "The Gay
Ninetys" (no, not that gay), the 1920's
called the "The Roaring Twenties" The
1950's, "The Faboulus Fifties", but what
are the 1900's, 1910's, 30's '40's, 60's,
70's, 80's & 1990's called? Will the
1990's be "the gay 90's?" (yes, that gay)
??

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Zymurgist

Carl Berry
08-19-1999, 08:38 PM
Sorry about that!

08-20-1999, 12:40 AM
Well, I fondly remember my first grade teacher saying, "When I was your age, back in aught-seven . . " So I intend to use that. I'll call 2000 "two thousand," then go into "aught-one," etc. Think how impressive it will be in a few years that most of us knew people born in the late 1800s! Not that those young whippersnappers will listen . . .

08-23-1999, 10:53 AM
General usage:

1890s--The Gay [or Naughty] 90s
c1900-14--La Belle Epoch, or The Edwardian Age
1920s--The Roaring 20s
1930s--The Depression Years
1940s--The War Years
1950s--The Eisenhower Years
1960s--The Swinging 60s
1970s--The "Me" Generation, or Watergate Years
1980s--The Reagan Years

moriah
08-23-1999, 02:15 PM
Fill in the blank:

The Seventies, The Eighties, The Nineties, The ______, The Teens, The Twenties.

1. The 2Ks (Two-Kays)
2. The Two Thousands
3. The Oughts
4. The Oughties
5. The Noughts
6. The Noughties
7. The Nils
8. The Nillies
9. The Decade of the (Third) Millennium
10. The Mils
11. The Turn of the (21st) Century
12. The Turn of the (Third) Millennium
13. The Zeroes
14. The Os (Ohs)
15. The Zips


I prefer #1. History will probably refer back to this as #12 or #11.

Peace.

Harmonious Discord
08-23-1999, 06:48 PM
I'm going for "The Big Zero".

bantmof
08-24-1999, 04:09 AM
I think people are going to say they were born in the year two thousand
But it's hard to get that falsetto right.

(I wonder how many people read that and are going, "huh??")

--
peas on earth

Sam Stone
08-24-1999, 04:17 AM
I suspect people will just say "two thousand" for the first year (i.e. yeah, that was back in two thousand). After that, I suspect they'll just say "oh one", "oh two", or 'two thousand and two", depending on the type of reference. i.e. "I went to university from 1998 until two thousand and two", or "I went to university from oh two until oh six".

I don't think you'll hear a lot of 'ought' because, even though that was used back for the turn of the century it's kind of an anachronism now.


Just my guess.

moriah
08-24-1999, 11:36 PM
Argh! People! Listen up. You still don't get it. The original question was,

What are you going to call the decade of 2000-2009.

Not, "how are you going to say the individual years?"

-m

moriah
08-24-1999, 11:38 PM
Oops.

Ignore that rant. Wrong bulletin board.

Sorry.

-m

Troy McClure SF
08-24-1999, 11:48 PM
Bantmof, I think the more important question is, "What the hell is Conan gonna do in four months?!"

bantmof
08-25-1999, 01:28 AM
Bantmof, I think the more important question is, "What the hell is Conan gonna do in four months?!"
I wonder too. But Andy is leaving (I'm not sure when), so maybe they'll just stop the skit when he goes. Or maybe they'll keep going as normal even after 2000 :-)

--
peas on earth

bantmof
08-25-1999, 01:32 AM
Ok, I fully admit right up front that this sounds appalling :-), but:

1980's -> "eighties"
1990's -> "nineties"
2000's -> "hundreds"
2010's -> "teens"
2020's -> "twenties"
etc

I will guess that the _specific_ years will be called "two thousand", and then "oh one", "oh two", etc, at least in the 'states.

Yeah, I don't like it either.

--
peas on earth

Big Iron
08-25-1999, 01:47 AM
I vote for the Naughty Aughties.