I disagree. We can celebrate (and do) a “new century” when we hit 2000. That’s fine with me. It’s just not technically the 21st century, if we define a century as 100 years with the first counting year being one.
And I have no problem calling 2000 the beginning of “a new century.” It most definitely is, and I most definitely said that’s fine in my original post. It’s just not technically the start of the 21st Century if we define a century as 100 years, with the starting year as 1. I don’t see at all how your post dismisses this technical argument. This century started in 2000 (or 2001, but most typically 2000 as used in conversation.) The 21st Century started in 2001.
I’m a pretty smart guy, but I’ve always found the practice of referring to “the nth century” slightly confusing and counter-intuitive. If you mention the fourteenth century, for example, I always have to take a few seconds to think through what that means: “Let’s see, I know that’s not the 1400’s, so it’s either the 1300’s or the 1500’s—which way does it go? Um… the 20th century means the 1900’s, so I subtract, so the 14th century is the 1300’s! I think? Why don’t they just say 'the thirteen hundreds” in the first place?!?"
But if I’m being pedantic, the two different formulations aren’t equivalent, because the nineteen hundreds ended on December 31, 1999, but the twentieth century ended on December 31, 2000.
I consider that it ran from the start of 1900 to the end of 1999. That’s the only thing that makes sense in conversation with ordinary people. There is a very good reason why people were only ever bothered about the calendar ticking over from 1999 to 2000, it was a new millenium that everyone thought was significant.
If you think differently then you’ll find yourself having pedantic arguments with people about things in the year 2000 not being part of the 21st century and that’s fine, knock yourself out but it is a losing (and pointless) game.
The periods of 100 years that we designate as “centuries” are arbitrary. To me it makes perfect sense to apply the century name to the relevant numbers. Anything else is unnecessarily pedantic and unhelpful. If you want precision then simply name the date or date range you are referring to but if you choose to use decade, century and millennium definitions that aren’t widely accepted then prepare to explain yourself ad-nauseum and encounter much eye-rolling for very little benefit.
Yes, I don’t like it, either, and I also have the same brief mental hiccup to convert from ordinal centuries to cardinals. I much prefer saying “the 2000s” or “the 1300s” or whatnot, but sometimes that can be confused for a decade name if it’s in the recent past. (I suspect “the 1300s” will always be interpreted as the century starting with the year 1300, but “the 1900s” it could be a toss-up as to whether the first decade of 1900 is meant or the entire century from 1900-1999.)
I don’t recall who it was but I recently saw a talking head on TV refer to the period 2000 - 2009 as “the two thousands” as if the rest of the century isn’t the two thousands.
Nailed it. Except, of course, that you meant either “it’s just annoyingly pedantic” or “it’s just annoying pedantry”. I am of course amazed and delighted to be the first to point this out.
I recall hearing that the first Y2K issues were identified in the late 1960’s in relation to 30 year mortgages. If a 30-year mortgage started in 1970, then it would end in 2000, and therefore they had to accommodate an 8-digt date. However, some of the incoming dates were still 6-digit. The 2-digit years would have been handled by the 50-year rule. If it’s less than 20, it’s the 2000’s. If it’s 20 or greater, it’s the 1900’s. Probably none of those late sixties programs are still running with a 30-year-old unrevised incoming date patch. Probably.
“A” century/decade can begin and end anytime. If you say “the” century/decade you have a specific start and end in mind but you can’t assume everyone else knows what you mean without additional info. The 1900s and the 20th century both are valid references but they overlap only 99 years.
“The 20’s” started on 1/1/2020. There can’t really be any debate about that, as the name supplies the definition: “years whose last two digits are in the twenties (i.e. 20-29)”.
“The current century”, on the other hand, is ambiguous.
[ul][li]Do you mean “the 21st century”? If so, it began on 1/1/2001.[/li]Or do you mean “the 2000’s”? They began 1/1/2000, because the year 2000 can’t really belong to “the 1900s”, now can it?[/ul]
And there wasn’t a Year One (or Two, Three, etc) either. Those years were all extrapolated centuries into the past. Year Zero can be extrapolated as well.
I would continue to extrapolate into negative years as well. Negative numbers aren’t that difficult a concept.
If we named decades the way we name centuries, the 203rd decade would start on January 1, 2021. We don’t do that, though. When we refer to the 20s, we mean the decade 2020 through 2029; that is, the years whose names end with “twenty-something.” There’s no contradiction or inconsistency in this.
You can consider anything you want, but it doesn’t make it so.
Terms like “the 1900s” and “the 2000s” are handy for that, not to mention, you don’t have to make the mental adjustment that Thudlow Boink mentioned earlier, that no, the 14th century means the 1300s, not the 1400s.
We’re 19 years into this new millennium. I’ve thought this way the whole time. Other than right this moment, I don’t remember getting into any such arguments.