This may be a “loanword” from the student’s native language. In Swedish, they use “1900-talet” (1900s) instead of “twentieth century”
Comment on The 1900s
gofsckyourself@lemmy.world 3 days agoBecause people don’t use that terminology when referring to a time period within a majority of living people’s lifetime.
broken_chatbot@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Donkter@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Sure they do. I’m sure the century cutoff helps too.
If someone one would refer to the 1920s as “the early 1900s” cause it’s over 100 years ago it follows logically to call other parts of the 1900s the mid and late period.
gofsckyourself@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Just because people can doesn’t mean people do. We have terminology for the time periods through the 1900s that have been in use for so long that people just don’t use that type of terminology. Particularly because it paints it in a misleading light, as if it were ancient history. People typically just refer to those periods as “the 80s” or “the 90s”.
Referring to those time periods with terminology we use for ancient history when we have far more frequently used terminology is a deliberate choice to make the time periods feel like ancient history. (Barring language barriers, of course)
It feels like you’re just trying to be contrarian. If you honestly believe it’s commonly used to refer to something so recent, then please provide evidence of people using that to refer to the 90s often. Otherwise you’re just relying on “I can imagine it, so it must be true”.