2019: Twenty-nineteen or Two thousand-nineteen?
 

How do you say 2019? And where do you live?

Everyone here says two thousand nineteen, but it's kind of awkward. I note that anything British I hear is 20-19.

I hope to hell we can all say 20-20 -two-thousand-twenty would probably do me in.

And will George Benson's 1985 hit re-enter the charts?

Twenty twenty for sure. :yesnod:

Another vote for twenty-twenty.

That said, the dire local radio station Mix96 was playing in the waiting area at the health centre when I was there with Dad earlier this week.

The traffic and travel bod came on and referred to the A4010 (a local road) as the forty-ten. Has a similar effect to the scraping of finger nails on a blackboard.

I've only ever heard it spoken as 'A four oh one oh'.

twentytwin

I go back and forth depending on what flows better in the sentence, like "data" and "data."

OK

twentyditto

XXXX, Clod.

I won't be using MMXX at all.

I've heard both around me and on tv. I mainly say twenty nineteen.

Kentucky.





What? Urrbody else just answered half the questions, I just chose the other half.

Kentucky Colonel says Too-Zeero-Wun-Niner.

It's 20-19 hereabouts. I'm rooting 20-20.

1920 was nineteen twenty, so 2020 must be twenty twenty. Can you see it? Is it clear? Which is better, two thousand twenty or twenty twenty. Sorry - Optical humor

Delco

Yeah, cuz twenty twenty is already in the lexicon as it relates to vision, so that's what people will say. I think I mostly say two thousand nineteen this year... Or just '19.

1901 was obviously "nineteen-oh-one" because it was too hard to say "one thousand nine hundred oh one"

But in 2001, we said "two thousand one" because "twenty oh-one" sounded weird and didn't save us any syllables. Plus there was that movie, and it was pronounced "two thousand one" which got us in the habit decades ago. And we've just continued the nomenclature. Once we hit 2010 we should have switched over to "twenty ten" but inertia had set in.

I'm expecting us to switch to "twenty" instead of "two thousand" in 2020 even though there is nothing that makes 2020 special numerically. My son graduates in 2020, and his whole graduating class has been referring to it as "twenty-twenty" since he was a freshman 4 years ago. So I bet we all make the switch then if we haven't already.

I've thought more about it, and I'm going to go ahead and declare a particular linguistic nuance:

When it is an adjective, people are more likely to say "twenty." When it is a noun, they say "two thousand."

Consider:

"Back in two thousand fourteen"
"The twenty-fourteen Olympic games"

"When Donald Trump was elected in two thousand sixteen"
"The twenty-sixteen election"

Yeahbut,

In 1814 [eighteen fourteen] we took a little trip
Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip …

ETA: and we're gonna party like it's 1999...
……...and the 2001 attack on the WTC...

Bad country music is no way to define anything.

This is good.

I was gonna say, I always say "two thousand nineteen" in reference to what I can't believe is still happening.
"It's two thousand nineteen--people are still [whatever the thing is]??"

All numbers prior to 2000 are irrelevant--no one ever said one-thousand-x-hundred anything. Likewise, once we hit the 2100s, it'll for sure go back to "twenty one" all the time.

2001-2009 are their own category because "twenty oh one" sounds dumb. But I maintain that years like "two thousand fifty-four" will stick around to some degree all the way to "two thousand ninety nine."

All it takes is one really catchy song, that popularizes saying the year as twenty-something in the lyrics, to change the way everyone says it for at least a decade. We'll see what pop culture says.

That's not very catchy.