Twenty-10 (aka 20-ten)

Hello, everyone! I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas holiday and is prepared to ring in the New Year tonight. As I do with many of my posts, I am going to provide somewhat of a rant on a certain topic - a topic which you may or may not have guessed by this post's title, my opening statement, or today's date - but here it goes.

As we bring in the New Year I would like to attempt to bring in with it a new manner of speaking. It is not a dialect issue so much as it is a phonetic number reading. I would say American society is split almost down the middle with the way we have been saying the date, starting in the year 2000, and I'd like to bring that other group over to my side, now that we're approaching a year that no longer contains the double zero.

I think it would be silly to continue on this path of saying each number in the date's year by itself, as we did from 2001 through 2009 (read: two-thousand one through two-thousand nine). I let that go because as I mentioned we all changed once 2000 hit and it was okay for the past ten years - plus I was less crotchety in those days than I am today ;). What I would like everyone to go to is back to the way it was, where we said the first two numbers of the date's year as a whole, and the last two as a whole, starting in 2010 (read: twenty ten). i really don't want to hear any more "two-thousand ten".. So if everyone could just start saying this properly, that'd be great.

Here's the logic. Since there were four digits, man has always said it with this rhythm. Think back to your history classes when you were discussing Viking quests in the year 1015 (or whatever the hell happened that year, in my school we weren't required to remember dates). No one said "one-thousand fifteen." You said, "ten fifteen," which is the way it should be. So if history repeats itself, which it often does, we should just take it back to saying the date correctly.

My other point of logic is if we don't change it in 2010, where does it stop? How silly will we all sound (or our grandchildren) if they're saying, "Man I can't wait for two-thousand one hundred twenty-six (2126)", or even, "two-thousand eighty-five (2085)". just say "twenty-one twenty-six" as if you were saying "nineteen twenty-six" for 1926, or "twenty eighty-five" for 2085. I think crime rates will reduce if we all revert back.

If I haven't convinced you by now that you should be saying twenty ten (2010) properly, then consider this. Most of us speak lazily by nature - it is part of being American. So by saying "twenty" instead of "two-thousand and" or even "two-thousand", you are saving at least one syllable... imagine how much more productive (OR counter-productive, for you slackers) you could be by skipping that syllable or two every time!

Happy New Year, everyone! Have a wonderful and safe night and may your twenty-ten be filled with joy and success!