A Peeve

[rsc]

I've been in a tiny minority for the last decade or so, namely the folks who believe that the names of the years of this decade should be pronounced "twenty-oh-one", etc. But I've more or less become resigned to the fact that very few people agree with me.

But lately, I've been pretty consistently hearing people on radio and TV calling the upcoming year "two thousand ten", and even the year five years from now "two thousand fourteen". This is just wrong. It must be stopped. Now.

Comments

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Your Majesty, the very waves of the sea will obey your just commands.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know. But I just had to vent.

[leboyfriend.livejournal.com]

I don't understand what is wrong with 'two thousand and nine'. One would, after all, say "Two thousand and nine years ago" and not "Twenty-oh-nine years ago". So I guess you may add me to the list of those who don't agree with you. I would like to hear your rationale for this though.

[madknits.livejournal.com]

Because it was seventeen-oh-nine, eighteen-oh-nine, nineteen-oh-nine, and for consistency in English, should be twenty-oh-nine.

In the next century, what are they going to say? Twenty-one-oh-nine, or two-thousand-one-hundred-nine?

[jss]

Without agreeing or disagreeing with the original poster's premise, I am concerned that the attempt to corroborate is "for consistency in English." That's very much fainting with damned praise, as it were; "consistency" and "English" have remarkably little to do with each other.

[jwg.livejournal.com]

For "historical reference" Ten sixty six is what I've always heard it called. Of course they probably called it an ancestral version of of Mille soixante six.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

In the next century, what are they going to say?

Tell me when you get there.

[madknits.livejournal.com]

I'll be sure to send a post card!

[leboyfriend.livejournal.com]

Good point!

[rsc.livejournal.com]

We don't say "nineteen sixty-six years ago" either. This is how we've named years. (See also jwg's comment about 1066.)

[trulygrateful.livejournal.com]

I never really thought of it, I just say "twenty-ten" and so on.

This means we're in agreement?

[rsc.livejournal.com]

Thank you! There need to be more people like you!

[madknits.livejournal.com]

Actually, it should be twenty-aught-one.

I believe Mssrs Kubrick and Clark are to blame for the current situation, what with two-thousand-and-one.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

Kubrick, for sure. Clark, maybe not; I remember hearing (I don't remember from whom, or on what authority) that he considered the title of his book to be "twenty-oh-one".

[auntieruth.livejournal.com]

I confess to being a contributor to your pet peeve. I promise to switch in 2010.

[slinkr.livejournal.com]

My grandmother made reference to something that happened in "two oh oh three" this weekend. That was one i hadn't heard before.

[ursomniac.livejournal.com]

Well. Since the current goalpost for 1AD is really 4BC, then next year is 0x7DE.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

I'll get the word to Don Orsillo immediately.

[vasilatos]

But the Space Odyssey.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

See my response above to madknits.

Tangentially...

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

What do you call the current decade?

-- thnidu
Fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, and double-ohs folkie
Nineties and double-ohs filker

Re: Tangentially...

[rsc.livejournal.com]

I generally try to avoid calling it anything. I haven't solved that one.

Re: Tangentially...

[homorphus.livejournal.com]

This decade is definitively (to me, anyway) the "Naughties". Which naturally followed on the high heels of the Gay Nineties.

Re: Tangentially...

[rsc.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well, this decade has been rather less Naughty for me than its immediate predecessors...

[pipyn.livejournal.com]

It's all one to me. As long as your peeve is fun for you, have at it.