Comment on At what point do you stop calling the years "two thousand and X" and start calling them "twenty X"?
takeheart@lemmy.world 1 day agoYou’re on to something but I doubt it’s the syllables. Rather it seems about phonetic ambiguity.
“twentynine” could mean both 29 and 2009, so it’s better to use “twothousandandnine” for the latter. “twentyten” cannot be interpreted as 30, only as 2010.
stinerman@midwest.social 22 hours ago
You can do “2009” as “twenty oh 9”, but that feels kinda awkward. “Two thousand nine” has the same number of syllables (4). “Twenty ten” is 3. “Two thousand ten” is 4.
Even “1900” is “nineteen hundred” (4) vs “one thousand nine hundred” (6).
erev@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Twenty aught nine