Submitted 2 weeks ago by its_kim_love@lemmy.blahaj.zone to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
I grew up in the 90s and I remember being able to truncate the year down to just 2 numbers when talking about years within the current millennium. It seems like we’re still saying twenty before every year and I’m just wondering when that will change.
I’ve been doing it since '01 (pronounced “Oh-Won”). I thought everyone else has been too?
Nah, I couldn’t even bring myself to say “twenty” something until 2013. Before that it was all like “two thousand and five”.
Still saying the twenty part. Not sure when that can fall away. Since I was around for the nineteens, maybe I’ll never stop.
Did you ever say ninety hundred? For example ninety hundred and ninety nine.
Most English-spealking people outside the US said ‘aught’ instead of ‘oh’, but definitely about 2005 the ‘two thousand and’ syntax evaporated.
In UK I've mostly have heard 'naughties' for the decade sine about 1999.
But I rarely heard "naughty X" as a year name unless someone was being even more deliberately daft. I'd say "oh" would be most common here after "two thousand and X" too in my experience.
I always thought that "'aught" was an American contraction of 'naught'.
"aught" in old timey-English can mean "other" or "else" or even "anything". In my local dialect we still say "owt" meaning "anything" as an opposite of "nowt" nothing".
Our quirky university president tried very hard to make “aughty-aught” happen for 2000. It did not catch on.
I think Australian’s usually say “oh”. Signed an Aussie that’s spent enough time abroad to confuse himself on what they actually say
Time to ruin your day. They’ve been calling that time period the “aughties”.
Time to ruin your day…
The words naughties and aughties are interchangeable and we have been calling them that since 2000.
I prefer “naughties”
You can now If you want. Who cares?
I wouldn’t start right now. That would be too drastic. At least leave it till tomorrow.
Just start by dropping it down to 3 numbers and see how you go from there.
It's important to say the "20" prefix so that viewers will know that we're set in "the future."
Back in 20
You can totally start now. Although, and maybe this is just a me thing, I’d feel like a massive bellend if I referred to something that happened in, for instance, 2021 as “in '21”.
I think I’d feel okay with “'01”, through to “'09”, then the teens feel weird again but only because it just feels weird to refer to a year as small as like… “'13”… although I don’t have that same problem with the naughties, maybe that’s because of the added “oh” making it seem like more than just a number? And then the twenties feel like big enough numbers to abbreviate but, yeah, again, I’d feel like a tool.
I’ve been doing that since -01
Did you say “aught one”?
“Oh 1” in British English
In the 30s you can start talking about the 20s. It will be annoying at first because people will try to be funny and/or get intentionally get confused that you’re talking about the 1920s.
I’d imagine talking the way you’re being nostalgic about will be in full swing by the 2040s.
You can now …it’s the 20s
You could do it since 00
IMHO when the two digit year equals the median age of all living people.
In other words, when the people who are born in 2xxx become the majority. That’s probably somewhere in the thirties.
(Not counting the ones who use a different year number, for example the Chinese)
I guess it depends on what you’re talking about.
Most of my conversations are about computers and technology, so shorting to 25 from 2025 is obvious since 1925, 1825, etc. didn’t have technology involving an iPhone, Linux, etc.
But if we’re talking something like cars, you probably need to be specific. You won’t be able to say something like “I bought a ‘20 Ford” because that could be at least two different years.
Agreed, spent too much time recently trying to get a "modern" database to accept one of out transactional systems' dummy EOT value (3456-02-01).
Took far, far too long for me to realise that it only wanted to store date/time in nanoseconds !? Fuck me, you'd have to be dumb fuck computer to want to measure every date in nanoseconds - even oracle wasn't that dumb, oh hang on we're "upgrading" to MS.
There must be a joke in here to do with dates that only last a nanosecond, I think it's to do with pandas' breeding rates.
I’ve found myself using just 2 numbers for the years after 2020
We already do in colloquial Japanese.
Depends on the language honestly. In my native language (that’s not English) it sounds somewhat clumsy with the zero in front, but it’s still sometimes used. Depending on the context it might be a simple number (zero two) or it might be an ordinal (zero second). From 2010 and on it’s been easier because you just say the equivalent of “tenth”, “eleventh” and so on.
In writing it also depends on the context - if it’s something ambiguous (that could be 1925 or 2025), then sure, write the full year, otherwise two digits are fine.
It started this year actually. 2025 is being called “the big '25” as slang.
I hope never so we never have Y2K again
Boy do I have bad news
I started this year, and I think you can refer to years as far back as '22 without it feeling awkward.
Me too.
Considering my kids already refer to pre millennial days as the ancient 19’s, you can already do it with the younger crowd.
In the English-speaking world, you can always shorten the year from 4 to 2 digits. But whether: 1) this causes confusion or 2) do you/anyone care if it does, are the points of contention. The first is context-dependent: if a customer service agent over the phone is trying to confirm your date of birth, there’s no real security issue if you only say the 2 digit year, because other info would have to match as well.
If instead you are presenting ID as proof of age to buy alcohol, there’s a massive difference between 2010 and 1910. An ID card and equivalent documentation must use a four digit year, when there is no other available indicator of the century.
For casual use, like signing your name and date on a holiday card, the ambiguity of the century is basically negligible, since a card like that is enjoyed at the time that it’s read, and isn’t typically stashed away as a 100-year old memento.
That said, I personally find that in spoken and written English, the inconvenience of the 4 digit year is outweighed by the benefit of properly communicating with non-American English users. This is because us American speak and write the date in a non-intuitive fashion, which is an avoidable point of confusion.
Typical Americans might write “7/1/25” and say “July first, twenty five”. British folks might read that as 7 January, or (incorrectly) 25 January 2007. But then for the special holiday of “7/4/25”, Americans optionally might say “fourth of July, twenty five”. This is slightly less confusing, but a plausible mishearing by the British would be “before July 25”, which is just wrong.
The confusion is minimized by a full 4 digit year, which would leave only the whole day/month ordering that is ambiguous. That is, “7/1/2025”.
Though I personally prefer RFC3339 dates, which are strictly YYYY-mm-dd, using 4 digit years, 2 digit months, and 2 digit days. This is always unambiguous, and I sign all paperwork like this, unless it explicitly wants a specific format for the date.
Maybe it’s generational. Do people born after 2000 already shorten it?
other than “back in 0X” I would probably assume it’s 19XX
I’ve seen it once on a meme, but I’m old. I would assume older people would have bounced back to it faster.
I belive that change will come when both of us are dead. To me the 20s still mean 1920.
I guess it’ll be when the majority of the working population is Gen Z or younger.
After 2100 should we start using three digits?
No it rolls over. 1999 was ‘99 not ‘999
I’ll get right on it! Expect a memo soon.
Maybe 20 will be a better year than 20, and people will start shorting it to 20 instead of 20. /j
12/22/25
Just do it.
What the fuck kind of calendar has at least 22 months in it?
They are correctly listing the month first.
You say the day first, the person listening has exactly 0 idea what the hell you’re talking about until you get to the month.
You say the month first, and they understand, and can form an understanding of your whole message faster than if you made them wait by saying the day first.
“When are you getting married?”
“Twenty-second of February”
/^ until February was said, the listener could glean nothing of value at all from the speaker.
I never stopped
I write down dates as mm/dd/yy or dd/mm/yy depending on who I’m writing to, so it’s always been two numbers for me.
I don’t think that’s ever going to be a thing again. We have too much written history and too much relevant history that is common knowledge between millenniums.
ooterness@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
ISO8601 / RFC3339 gang represent. You’ll have to take four digit years from my cold, dead hands.
DrFistington@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Spitting hot truth.
qaz@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
!rfc3339@programming.dev