We’re now exactly one-quarter of the way through 2010 and as yet, I’ve yet to see a consensus emerge as to how we’re supposed to pronounce it.
I’m resolutely a twenty-ten person – it stands to reason since if you think back to 1910 (those who can remember that far back), it was pronounced nineteen-ten.
I still hear it being pronounced two thousand and ten on the radio and television though. This sounds clunky and as if the notion of two thousand still gives the feel of being futuristic. Again, I find myself thinking of 1910, you’d never hear it being pronounced nineteen hundred and ten or one thousand, nine hundred and ten. (Sometimes the former admittedly in a formal setting)
Why can’t a civilised society cope with how to name the number of the year we’re living in?
Interestingly, I never hear 2012 being called anything other than twenty-twelve when talking about the Olympics – perhaps it’s going to take another two years for sensible year nomenclature to take hold.
