WHAT THE NEW DECADE WILL BE CALLED

Posted on | December 23, 2009 | No Comments

Come January 1, we’ll dump the “two-thousands” and get cozy with the “twenty-tens.” So say the language experts. In 2000, there were “uncertainties,” said David Crystal of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, so we ignored the example of 1900 (“nineteen-hundred”), and we said “two-thousand.” Why? “Twenty-hundred” is awkward, said Jesse Sheidlower of the Oxford English Dictionary. The media is also quickly adopting twenty-ten since it’s easier to say, has fewer syllables and takes less time than two-thousand-ten.

What will you be saying?