I just read this Straight Dope classic in the archives. It seems Cecil struggled with what the Class of 2000 will call itself. The answer seemed obvious to me long before last year’s graduation of our high school seniors. They called themselves the Class of Two-thousand. Nobody took to the aught-aught business of the past century, and nobody came up with an alternative term for this millennium’s first decade.
Beat me to it Clucky. Also, as the year '01 dawns, everyone in my neck of the woods calls it oh-one. As a matter of fact, I accidently dated a memo at work 1/5/00. My boss said “You dated it two thousand. It should be oh-one.” This is the trend so far.
So if we extrapolate, this decade should be known as the “Ohs”.
I never saw what the big deal about all this was.
“Class of 2000” sounds very nice.
Calling this year “Two-thousand one” sounds nice, too, but saying “oh-one” makes sense if you are talking about writing a memo.
I am hoping that people will stop fretting about trying to think of an abbreviated way to say the following years (although “the Zeroes” is kinda cool), because if no conclusion can be reached, we will continue to say “Two-thousand six, two-thousand seven…” And i won’t mind, nobody should.
Brevity is not the only element of comunication. I think these will be times where florid and wordy speech will be favored, like poetry.
I miss the way we all spoke in the 1400’s. Weren’t those the days?
You remember the 1400’s?
Doesn’t everybody?