It’s been my experience throughout the 2000s that people have almost universally stated the year as “two thousand [year]” – i.e., 2009 was “two thousand nine,” not “twenty-oh-nine.” I’ve noticed, though, that we’re entering a period where the transition to “twenty [year]” is starting to happen, and, thus, we will probably see both usages for a few years (for instance, ads for the movie 2012 state the movie’s title as “two thousand twelve,” while, on the other hand, I saw some commercial featuring Christina Aguilera that mentioned an offer that was good through 2011, pronounced “twenty eleven”).
My question is, when do you think that the “twenty [year]” convention will become the universal standard? I think that the absolute latest will be 2020, just because “twenty twenty” already sounds familiar to most people from 20-20 vision and the ABC show “20/20”, and there’ll be no going back from there. Personally, though, my guess is that the switch will happen earlier, by the end of 2013. It seems to me that “two thousand thirteen,” with its four “t”/“th” sounds, is much more awkward to say than “twenty thirteen,” so that’s when it will really catch on.
What say you? Will “twenty ten” become the standard starting tomorrow, or will people still be saying “two thousand ninety-nine” in 2099?
Interesting question. FWIW, most people in this part of the world have been using “Two thousand and [Year]” so far- so you’d refer to something happening in “Two Thousand And Eight”, for example.
Personally, I’ll probably continue to use this format for a while yet. The whole “Twenty [Year]” format conjures up images of The Future for me, and I don’t quite feel like we’re there yet.
I think twenty-ten is fine, but sounds weird when doing a whole date. So it would be “in the year twenty-ten” but “on April 2nd, two-thousand-ten.” Saying random dates in my head I’ve come up with the following all full dates using the 2k form, but most years except 2011 (twenty-eleven sounds awkward to me) using just twenty-[number] for plain year statement.
I forgot to mention in my earlier post that I won’t be calling this year “twenty ten” or “two thousand ten”. I’m going to be a real rebel and just call it “ten”. I mean, it’s not like we ever said “nineteen hundred” back in the 1900s. It was “eighty-five” or “ninety-eight” or whatever. And it’s not ambiguous either: if you say you did something back in ten, nobody is going to sit there scratching their head wondering if you meant 2010, 1910, or 1810. So fuck it, it’s ten.
English has always prided itself on being able to express things with relatively few syllables. So why the hard-on now for “two thousand” or even worse “two thousand and”? It makes no damn sense.
