I woke up this morning 10 hours after 2010 began, ready to take on the new year and new decade, even with my lingering uncertainty over what to call either of them. Is the year, 2010, supposed to be pronounced "twenty ten" or "two thousand ten?" And what decade are we in? "The tens" sounds odd. "The teens?" That doesn't work because the years 2010, 2011, and 2012 aren't teens. As my first in-year resolution, I settled this morning on calling this year "twenty ten." Even though I called last year "two thousand nine" which would mean that "two thousand ten" would be the natural follow-up, "twenty ten" sounds better to me, so that's what it'll be. My second big decision of the year (the first was whether to use Log Cabin syrup or grandma's homemade syrup on my waffles -- grandma won) was solidified when I read on SFGate.com that the National Association of Good Grammar has decreed that 2010 should be pronounced "twenty ten." I'm glad when my grammatical choices, or any choices for that matter, are affirmed by a fancy-sounding organization. So with that debate settled, I know need to figure out what to call this decade. In this month's issue of The New Yorker, Rebecca Mead asks in The Talk of The Town column what we should call the just-completed ten-year period. "We still don't have a good collective name for the first decade of the twenty-first century," she writes. "At least, not one beyond 'the first decade of the twenty-first century'." Mead mentioned options such as "the ohs," "the zips" and "the nadas," before saying "the aughts" is likely the posthumous name for the time period. Fine, that works for me. As for the years 2010-2019, we've got 10 years to figure that out, so I'm not going to worry about it on the first day of the decade. (photo courtesy of Optical Illusions' Photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/optical_illusion/4219923214/)
Friday, January 1, 2010
Welcome to Twenty Ten
I woke up this morning 10 hours after 2010 began, ready to take on the new year and new decade, even with my lingering uncertainty over what to call either of them. Is the year, 2010, supposed to be pronounced "twenty ten" or "two thousand ten?" And what decade are we in? "The tens" sounds odd. "The teens?" That doesn't work because the years 2010, 2011, and 2012 aren't teens. As my first in-year resolution, I settled this morning on calling this year "twenty ten." Even though I called last year "two thousand nine" which would mean that "two thousand ten" would be the natural follow-up, "twenty ten" sounds better to me, so that's what it'll be. My second big decision of the year (the first was whether to use Log Cabin syrup or grandma's homemade syrup on my waffles -- grandma won) was solidified when I read on SFGate.com that the National Association of Good Grammar has decreed that 2010 should be pronounced "twenty ten." I'm glad when my grammatical choices, or any choices for that matter, are affirmed by a fancy-sounding organization. So with that debate settled, I know need to figure out what to call this decade. In this month's issue of The New Yorker, Rebecca Mead asks in The Talk of The Town column what we should call the just-completed ten-year period. "We still don't have a good collective name for the first decade of the twenty-first century," she writes. "At least, not one beyond 'the first decade of the twenty-first century'." Mead mentioned options such as "the ohs," "the zips" and "the nadas," before saying "the aughts" is likely the posthumous name for the time period. Fine, that works for me. As for the years 2010-2019, we've got 10 years to figure that out, so I'm not going to worry about it on the first day of the decade. (photo courtesy of Optical Illusions' Photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/optical_illusion/4219923214/)
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I'm with you on this one. I've been uncomfortable with the "two thousand" reference ever since 2010 started appearing as we got closer to the end of 2009. Two thousand ten just doesn't sound like a year, just a number.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the article in the Chronicle, I'm wondering if this question will be the first big generational divide between the millenials and the boomers.
sb