2011 Pronunciation - my opinion

by Mad Sweeney 7 Replies latest jw friends

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  Mad Sweeney

  We are now in the year 2011. You may recall some discussion at the turn of the century about how to pronounce the years 2000, 2001, etc. It seems to me that the consensus was to say "two-thousand" and "two-thousand one" and so on. But I think now that we are in the second decade of this century it is time to move on to the traditional two-number pronunciation system for the years and continue with it for the rest of the century.

  Just as 1975 is pronounced "nineteen seventy-five" and not "one-thousand nine-hundred seventy-five" it is time to pronounce the year 2011 as "twenty eleven" and not "two-thousand eleven."

  What do you think?
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  blondie

  tomato--tomato

  potato--potato
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  Leolaia

  Yeah many of us made the transition in 2010, and I noticed myself doing it. I think we were already preconditioned to say "thousand" because of the millennium expectations for the year 2000, such that for decades we said "two thousand" for this year instead of "twenty oh oh" (even with "1800", "1900", etc. we break from the usual pattern to say "nineteen hundred"). And similarly "2001" was always "two thousand and one" rather than "twenty oh one" (whereas we readily say nineteen oh one). I think we stuck with the "thousand" datings up to 2009 because of the two zeroes in the date, which consisted of a thousand + a single-digit number. Now we can have decade names like we did last century.

  What I want to know is what are we going to call the past decade. We love to refer to decades. How is VH1's "I Love the 00s" going to be pronounced?
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  Mad Sweeney

  I would pronounce "00s" as "ooze."
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  zombie dub

  00s are pronounced by nearly everyone as "naughties" (UK anyway)

  can we just say eleven now? Like we used to say ninety-nine (not 1999), doesn't feel right still!
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  Heaven

  LOLSpeak says ....Twenty - Elebenty.
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  Yan Bibiyan

  ...or as SpongeBob says "Eleventy-Seventh anniversary"....
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  slimboyfat

  I have been advocating twenty ever since the year twenty hundred.