This article from the San Francisco Chronicle made my head spin. It’s about an accordionist, Tom Torriglia, who thinks that saying the current year, 2010, as “two thousand (and) ten” is bad grammar, and insists that everyone ought to say “twenty ten” instead. The story, amazingly, ran on the front page. And there are four things I want to say about it.
1) When Torriglia claims that no one would say “I was born in one thousand nine hundred and fifty-three,” he may be right. But people would write it, as for instance in the New Jersey State Constitution:
“[…] ten seats shall be filled by election in the year one thousand nine hundred and fifty-three […]”
2) Furthermore, sometimes people say “nineteen hundred (and) fifty-three”. That’s more similar to “two thousand (and) ten” than “one thousand nine hundred and fifty-three” is, phonologically speaking, so it’s the more relevant comparison. Here’re snippets from an (oral) interview* of Dr. Walter Cooper at the Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Online Project:
“My parents came north in nineteen hundred and twenty-one. […] And I had interviewed in May nineteen hundred forty-six, so the—I met with the director of admissions, I remember his name, I won’t call it now. […] We married in January of nineteen hundred and fifty-three, and well, being married, I then confronted the housing segregation in Rochester.”
3) Torriglia is so convinced that two thousand ten is bad grammar and illogical (he claims to cringe at it) that he even insists that two thousand nine is bad grammar and that it ought to have been twenty aught nine.
4) Torriglia is 56. He is no longer young enough to be this foolish. Neither, for that matter, is the 145-year-old Chronicle.
The truth is that it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing wrong with either pronunciation. Twenty ten will probably be the more common one since it’s shorter, but two thousand ten won’t disappear. Nor should it, Tom Torriglia’s opinion notwithstanding.
[Update, 01/04/10: One additional thought here. How did Torriglia pronounce the year 2000, if “two thousand” wasn’t acceptable? “Twenty aught aught”? If so, he’s completely absurd.]
—
*: The silver lining to having read the Chronicle article is that it led me to this interview. If you’ve got some time on your hands, I recommend reading it; it starts off with a fascinating first-hand look at the way that even northern companies and colleges exhibited fairly open racism against even highly intelligent blacks in the forties and fifties, and it pushes further on from there.
Motivated Grammar 
23 comments
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January 3, 2010 at 10:15 pm
Mongoose
Reading this article made me realize I don’t say year numbers often enough to have asked myself how to pronounce the 200X years yet. Word!
January 3, 2010 at 10:31 pm
Danny
Lest there be any confusion about this guy’s authority, they make sure to quote him saying that “5 items or less” is ungrammatical. (We’ll just ignore the part where neither the reporter nor any of the editors point out his error there.)
January 3, 2010 at 10:55 pm
Flesh-eating Dragon
It’s interesting how the English-speaking world switched from the format exemplified by “nineteen ninety nine” to that exemplified by “two thousand (and) one”. (I’ve bracketted the “and” to signify that Americans tend to drop it whereas the rest of us retain it.) It seems that we picked up the habit of saying “thousand” in the year 2000, and have not been ready to let it go. Does this indicate that the novelty of being in the new millennium has yet to wear off?
For my part, I couldn’t possibly endorse “twenty aught nine”, but “twenty oh nine” would have been fine. Likewise, as the last decade’s equivalent of “the early/late nineties”, I favour “the early/late oh-somethings” (and “the early/late tens”, not “teens”, for the decade now beginning).
These are my own aesthetic preferences, which as a descriptivist I consider myself free to discuss, but not to conflate with facts about what is right and wrong.
January 4, 2010 at 12:57 am
johnwcowan
Americans only drop it because their ignorant pedagogues make them drop it. Some of us resist indoctrination and say “two hundred and five” like the rest of the anglophone world.
January 4, 2010 at 4:45 am
paullamb
It’s not even a grammar question, strictly speaking, is it? Seems more like a usage issue, if even that much.
January 4, 2010 at 8:37 am
Peter
As a professinal linguist, this is a subject I have been very interested in for over 5 years.
I agree that 2010 and years onward should be pronounced as “twenty”, but not that 2000–2009 should have been pronounced with “twenty” as well.
There are two factors as to why “two thousand” is appropriate for a pronunciation of years from 2000–2009, and why “twenty” is appropriate for years from 2010–2999.
1. Syllable count.
For 2000, “two thousand” has only three (3) syllables, while “twenty hundred” or “twenty oh-oh” have four (4) syllables. From 2001, the syllable count for both variations of pronuncation stayed parallel up to and including 2009. Now, in 2010, “twenty ten” has only three (3) syllables, while “two thousand ten” has four (4), or even five (5) if you say “two thousand *and* ten”.
2. General subconscious effect of the appearance of the number.
Looking at the actual numbers of 1901, 1801, 1701, and all the way back to at least 1101, you could easily separate them into two separate number sequences (i.e., “nineteen” and “oh one”). But for 2001 (or 1001, which is too far back to have records of about this), the two zeros make it almost impossible for us to want to say “twenty” and “oh one” as the number out loud. It *screams* “two thousand (and) one” instead. Simply put, “two thousand” just *looked* and *felt* better to say for the years 2000–2009.
But look at 2010. That number, and years following it (i.e. 2015, 2079, 2120) are easily separated into two separate number sequences, allowing for us to find them easier to vocalize as such.
I also wanted to make a final point:
It is my belief that in about 30 years or so, after the “twenty” pronunciation has taken over and “two thousand” is rarely if ever used (except maybe during weddings), then people will eventually retroactively apply “twenty” to the years of the 2000s decade.
In otherwords, by the year 2050 or even earlier, I can see people talking about the “September 11th, twenty oh-one” attacks in retrospect, even though it would not be practical to do so if you had to speak about these years on a daily basis.
January 4, 2010 at 9:42 am
Vance Maverick
Torriglia is 56. He is no longer young enough to be this foolish. Neither, for that matter, is the 145-year-old Chronicle.
Don’t know about Torriglia (apart from Those Darn Accordions), but the Chronicle is, alas, in its second childhood.
Peter, as a “professional linguist”, can you explain in any detail why a small difference in syllable count matters for usage?
January 4, 2010 at 2:46 pm
Daniel
johnwcowan, your claim that Americans drop the “and” in “two thousand (and) eight” because “ignorant pedagogues make them drop it” is as lacking in evidence as Torriglia’s claim that it constitutes bad grammar. Who are these pedagogues, and when and where have they said this? Most Americans, I suspect, have said whatever comes naturally on this point.
January 4, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Daniel
On the subject of the “proper” pronunciation of 2010: I personally find that “two thousand ten” seems more natural to me than “twenty ten”. I suspect this is because it has the exact same metrical structure as eight of the past nine years (even 2007, the lone exception, differs only in adding an unstressed syllable to the end). I also find “two thousand twelve”, which has the same metrical structure, more natural than “twenty twelve”. However, “two thousand eleven” and “two thousaid thirteen” have different metrical structures, and I find myself preferring “twenty eleven” and “twenty thirteen”.
That being said, in another 727 days I may be so used to “twenty eleven” that at that point I will go with “twenty twelve” as well. Time will tell, and unless someone points me back to this page I’m sure I’ll have forgotten by then that I ever said I preferred “two thousand twelve”.
January 5, 2010 at 1:17 am
gary
whether you say twenty twelve or two thousand twelve, it’s still the worst film produced this decade.
January 5, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Bill S.
Torriglia is an *accordionist*. Annoying people is part of his *job*. He’s just diversifying.
January 5, 2010 at 9:00 pm
Marilyn
American elementary arithmetic texts have omitted the “and” for decades. 2,436 for example
two thousand four hundred thirty-six. No ands. That’s been the rule in the U.S.
Just think of all the ink we’ve saved.
January 5, 2010 at 11:13 pm
Maria
as i work on wedding invitations all day long, i can confidently say that “two thousand (and) nine” and “two thousand (and) ten” are the most common ways to write the year when written out in words. not sure if there’s a formal vs informal part to this debate as well.
January 6, 2010 at 4:49 am
h. s. gudnason
@ johncowan, Maria, et al.:
I can remember occasional exercises in U.S. elementary and junior high school in the late 50s and 60s in which we were made to write out numerals and omit the “and.” At this point, though, I can’t remember whether it was orthographic practice in Language Arts [sic] or practice in distinguishing between numbers and numerals in math.
I was probably too sheep-like in those days to have even considered resisting the indoctrination. And now I so rarely name numerals that it doesn’t often arise. Though now that I think of it, whenever I recite the plot of Don Giovanni to myself, I do think “one thousand AND three in Spain,” and not “one thousand three.”
January 6, 2010 at 10:38 am
Daniel
Maria, I suspect there is a formal/informal aspect to this issue. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t most wedding invitations from eleven years ago say “Nineteen Hundred Ninety-Nine” instead of “Nineteen Ninty-Nine”? If so, that would indicate that the wording on invitations doesn’t match with what people typically say in conversation.
Furthermore, it would imply that the only viable options on the invitation are “Twenty Hundred (and) Ten” and “Two Thousand (and) Ten”. In such a case, I think it’s no surprise that “Two Thousand (and) Ten” is preferred. After all, you’re going for a formal feel, and “Two Thousand” definitely sounds more formal than “Twenty Hundred”.
January 8, 2010 at 11:40 am
bekitty
I think I prefer Bill Bailey’s solution: he prefers to call 2010 “ten past eight”.
January 9, 2010 at 8:22 am
The Ridger
Any comparison between 19 and 20 as decade prefixes is bound to fail unless one remembers that no one ever says “I have twenty hundred dollars” but many (most?) do say “I have nineteen hundred dollars.” “Twenty hundred” isn’t something English speakers say. However, once extra digits are added, we tend to pronounce numbers that are being used as labels in smaller increments. So, yes, “I have three thousand, five hundred and seventy” but (most likely) “I live at thirty-five seventy-five Whatever Rd”.
Funnily, while I was typing this, I got a phone call from someone who needed my credit card, and I heard myself say the expiration date as “two thousand ten”. So while I expect it’ll be “twenty-one ten” it’s certainly up in the air for 20xx…
January 11, 2010 at 10:55 am
Joanne Mason
I have the same question as paullamb. Is it really a matter of grammar, or is it just stylistic preference?
I’ve been saying “two thousand ten” out of habit, though I’ve been hearing “twenty ten” just as frequently. I can see one or the other catching on because of preference or because it’s easier to say, but what on earth makes one or the other wrong or right? They’re both logical.
On the “and” issue – I remember in elementary school being told time and again that a phrase like “four hundred AND five” was wrong, wrong, wrong.
Yet my college diploma says, “Given at Hempstead, New York, this thirty-first day of May, one thousand nine hundred AND eighty-nine.”
Interesting.
January 11, 2010 at 1:54 pm
LS
I find the “and” discussion interesting, since the inclusion of the “and” is the pet peeve of many (American) math teachers — contrary to what I’m reading here about most Americans leaving out the “and.” Colloquially we say “four hundred and sixty-three,” for example, but the convention in math is that “and” stands for a decimal: 463 is “four hundred sixty-three”, 4.63 is “four AND sixty-three hundreths.” I have never heard an English teacher weigh in on the subject of numbers other than the eternal debate over how large they must be before you can write them as numerals.
Dates and counting numbers aren’t quite the same thing, though, and I would say 2010 the date would be better spoken as “Twenty Ten” while as a counting number I would say “Two thousand (and) ten.” If one projects into the future somewhat — 2110 would become quite the mouthful as “two thousand, one hundred (and) ten”, so it’ll most likely be “twenty one ten;” the clarity added by the place naming would be useful when dealing with money, say, but doesn’t serve a purpose in dates.
January 14, 2010 at 7:18 am
Cecily
@LS “4.63 is “four AND sixty-three hundreths.””
So in the US, when you read decimals, you say it as a fraction?
In BrE, we would say “four point six three” and anyone saying “four point sixty three” in school would be firmly corrected, because “it isn’t 63, it’s a decimal less than one”.
January 15, 2010 at 8:49 am
Hmm…Is it Twenty-Ten or Two-Thousand Ten? « Shirley Buxton
[…] people have definite thoughts as to which is correct and have written concerning their opinions. Others take issue with there being any absolutes in the […]
March 11, 2011 at 11:33 am
Adam Gleason
I think that people will go with convention, and convention just hasn’t set in yet. When the media starts to say it one way, I believe that eventually everyone will go in that direction too. My prediction? That people are going to go for the “twenty eleven” and so forth. It’s just easier!
March 11, 2011 at 11:35 am
Jamie London
My work takes me to formal events, mainly weddings. And in the wedding speeches I’ve listened to, read, and even helped compose, people in formal atmospheres tend to like the long, formal version of the year, “two thousand eleven” rather than “twenty eleven.” The latter seems more casual, for everyday use!