Transcript of “Will We Drop the “20” in the 2000s Like We Did “19” in the 1900s?”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Dax. I’m calling from Santa Cruz, California.
Hello, Dax. What’s on your mind today?
I’m wondering when are we going to, you know, as a culture, English speakers, when are we going to stop saying 20?
And what I’m talking about is the date, the year, like the year is 2026.
And I just feel like we’ve been in the 21st century now for 26 years, more than a quarter of a century.
It’s like, don’t we all know that it’s 20, 20, like we all know the 20 part, right?
Like at what point, like I have some kids and a couple are going to graduate in 28.
If I say my kids are graduating in 28, you understand what I’m saying, right?
Or do I have to keep saying my kids are graduating in 20, 28?
And I’ve discussed it with my kids, and they think that I’m just crazy and that the 20 needs to keep going for a long time.
One said into the 50s, and the other one was like, no, into the 80s.
I’m like, well, at that point, we’re almost to 2100, and then the whole thing starts over again.
Yeah, yeah.
You guys remember, like, you know, Y2K, and it was 98, 99, and then, you know, Y2K, 2000, like, that was so weird.
But kind of cool.
And then we had that decade of just really awkwardness.
Remember 2001?
Yeah, people trying to coin all these terms for it, like the aughts and the noughts, which didn’t really stick.
But people trying to make it happen.
Yeah.
There’s two key points that I want you to take away, Dax.
The first one is we’re not going to decide this all together as a group by talking about it.
It’s just going to happen when we make that switch over to saying the two-number year.
Instead of the four number a year.
And the second thing is it’s complicated by the fact that we have incredible archives of information from the last century.
So it’s not a problem that they had in the 1900s.
So in the 1900s, they didn’t have constant easy reference back to media like films and music from the 1800s, right?
So they didn’t really have to worry about the confusion about saying, oh, back in 22, people kind of knew what you were talking about.
The other thing is it’s going to take a while before 1900 years, the 1900s, stop being a common everyday reference.
You know, we still talk about political things that happened, important political things and wars and so forth that happened in the 1900s.
So as long as that’s happening, we’re probably still going to use the four-number reference.
But once we kind of reach that tipping point where we’re more interested in what’s been happening in our current century,
That’s when we may see, if there’s some kind of cultural consensus, we may see people switch over to just doing the two-number year.
So that’s where we stand with this.
So this century is behaving differently than the last century because we have this media memory, all this data and these historical records from the 1900s that can be called up at the press of a mouse or the touch of a keyboard.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Okay, cool.
All right.
Thanks for calling.
Appreciate it.
Oh, thank you so much.
I love your show so much.
It’s really great to talk to you.
Take care now.
Bye-bye.
Thanks, Dax.
Yeah, you too.
Bye-bye.
