Discussion Groups / British English / March 2010

At 17:46:43 on Sun, 22 Nov 2009, David M
<david@bogus.domain.dom.invalid> wrote in
<31aot6-lvv.ln1@pepper.local.lan>:

I was surprised by the invention of the "noughties";  I had pretty much
expected to follow the convention of the previous couple of centuries,
which was to refer to "in the year eight" or similar format, for
anything between "in the year ought" and about "in the year fifteen";
the point where the change occurred from the format "the year nn" to
just "nn" seems to have varied, although by "18" or "19" "the year"
appeared to have been dropped almost entirely, leaving just "in '18" or
similar.

But this is drawn from reading of fiction either written at the time, or
set in the time;  nothing scholarly underlies it!

Personally, I suspect that in this particular century we will move from
"two thousand and nine" to "twenty-ten", and only arrive at the
short-format "in 21" in (surprise!) 2021 or later, because of the
possibility of confusion inherent in the use of "twenty".

Should I live so long.

David M <david@bogus.domain.dom.invalid>:

Some of us never had that "noughties" habit. Twenty-hundred, twenty-oh-
one, etc, for me. So twenty-ten it will be.

On BBC Radio Four I've heard both two-thousand-and-nine and twenty-oh-
nine. I've never heard a bald "oh-nine", though, and when I've tried it
on people it has caused the odd frown. I don't expect it to gain any
traction for at least another twelve years or so now.

I've noticed that when referring to the London Olympics, the most common
media usage seems to be the "twenty-twelve Olympics".

I expect it will be in transition for a year or two as habits change,
but I expect most people will revert to the twenty- usage.

Cheers
Tony

......and on a similar note, what decade are we in?

We had the eighties, the nineties and the noughties, are we now in the tens
or is this decade called the teens even though we're not in the teens for
another three years?