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Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 3:38 pm

...well not quite, one more year to go!

Although it would appear that others don't seem to grasp this simple concept.

From the BBC Letters Page

Who wants in on my "How long until someone points out that the noughties end on 1 Jan 2011, not 2010 before getting their coat" sweepstakes? I got Today. (On a different topic, where do I send those Tunnock's?)
Pascal, Grand Union Canal, Cowley, UK
Monitor note: Monitor Towers, sir. We'll, er, send them to the right place.

And from another forum I post on

'What are the iconic objects of the decade?'

...off to bang my head on the desk.....

Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 4:01 pm

Ms Mockinatrix wrote:

"How long until someone points out that the noughties end on 1 Jan 2011, not 2010 before getting their coat"

But the Nineties ended on 31 Dec 1999, with no dispute (or millenium bug) so why don't the naughties end 31 Dec 2009?

Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 4:09 pm

Is a decade now 9 years then?

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 18313

2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009

By my count, that's ten. Wink

Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 4:46 pm

and we had a year zero? Wink

Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 4:55 pm

Ms Mockinatrix wrote:

we had a year zero?

We must've, before Santa's first birthday on 25 December 0 AD.

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 18313

No and there are two schools of thought on this, this wiki talking about the millenium rather than decades but the same issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium

Quote:

The issue is tied to the convention of using ordinal numbers to count millennia (as in "the third millennium"), as opposed to using cardinal numbers (as in "the two thousands"), which is unambiguous as it does not depend on which year counting starts.

Quote:

This is similar to the common demarcation of decades by their most significant digits, e.g. naming the period 1980 to 1989 as the 1980s or "the eighties."

Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 4:58 pm

ooo another one to add

BC
BCE
CE
BS
BSE

Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 5:00 pm

I bet the bonzo's who started the calander wern't sure how many years had passed when they decided to start it.

You can imagine the scene :

"So we have decided that this new religion will be the official Roman religion. what next?"
"Well we could start a new calander"
"Based on what?"
"Based on the Birth of Jesus"
"When was that?"
"Dunno"
"Best guess?"
"3 or 4 hundred years ago"
"So we're not sure?"
"Not 100%. It was a long time ago"
"So what do we do?"
"You're the Emperor. Pick a number"
"OK! 365"
"Cool! So this 365 AD?"
"Thereabouts - near as makes no difference"
"And if anyone argues, you can have them put to death as heritics".

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 18313

http://alpineopinion.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/is-2009-the-end-of-the-noughties-decade/

Quote:

The decade may start in 2001, but this is all about what the years are called. No one would suggest that 1980 was in the ’70s.

Perhaps 2010-2012 can be the pre-teens.

Edit:

Quote:

The decade known as the “noughties” (to some) ends 31st December 2009 and even you cannot argue against that. But wait! you want to argue against it? but why? The name comes from the two zeros in the middle. Therefore to answer the blogs title “Is 2009 the end of the ‘noughties’ decade?”

Check and mate good sir.

If you want to argue that we have yet to complete the block of 10 years in decade 200 then start a new blog post.

Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 5:11 pm

Does that mean then, that from 2013 to 2019, we're heading for

'I hate you' [doorslam]
'YOU know nothing' [doorslam]
'It's SOOO unfair' [doorslam]
'But...but...' [doorslam]

Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 5:13 pm

@ Hitchhiker

I heard somewhere (possibly in the pub, so to be treated with a pinch of salt) that the reason we have a big gap in the recorded history known as the 'Dark Ages' is because a cockup was made working back how many years it was to the birth of Christ, by Bishops keen to celebrate the first Millenium. But it wasn't yet.

So basically, there are possibly some centuries AD that just didn't happen, so no wonder there's no history for them.

Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 5:51 pm

I'am not afraid! Smile

Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 6:56 pm

those who can count to 1,000 are correct that the 2nd millenium ended at the end of year 2000
[and not, as is popularly thought, at the end of 1999].
however, the nineties and the noughties are not tied to decades, centuries or millenia counted from 1 a.d.
the epoch for the noughties is 1st Jan 2000, so the noughties end on 31st dec 2009.

Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 8:00 pm

As near as anyone can figure (given the dates of ruling figures mentioned in the New Testament), Jesus was born around 6 AD.

And then there were a couple of times when Popes decided to re-align the calendar to match the sun - the most recent of which gave us leap years.

The decade known as the "naughties" is the years from 2000 through 2009. The first decade of the twenty-first century is January 1, 2001 through December 31, 2010.

Does that clarify? Smile

Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 8:29 pm

Quote:

The first decade of the twenty-first century is January 1, 2001 through December 31, 2010.

Does that clarify?

No, that's confused me again. I have just been reading a Wiki article on the Gregorian calendar, but I am none the wiser as to when it was decided to count back to the birth of Christ. Was the year 1066 called that at the time, for example, or was it something else, later adjusted to 1066?

Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 9:21 pm

Shouldn't the title say "Pedants' Corner" as there is more than one of us?

Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 9:40 pm

Dunno, there was only 1 when MsM started it. But yes, now there are plural pedants.

Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 10:55 pm

There you go, Mr T Wink

Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:42 pm

AND ... what's the correct English pronunciation of 2011 or 2020 for that matter?
Two Thousand and Eleven or Twenty Eleven?
Two Thousand and Twenty or Twenty Twenty?

I'm looking forward to being rid of the "Two Thousand" prefix.

Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:58 pm

I'm looking forward to saying "Tickity-Ten."
It's what I imagine all old people will start saying around tickity-twenty or so.
Just getting a jump on things.

Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2009 12:12 am

"Naughties", sounds like old people trying to be funny. Confused

Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2009 12:35 am

Titania wrote:

Jesus was born around 6 AD

i think you mean b.c., not a.d.

wikipedia wrote:

Scholars conclude that Jesus was born 7–2 BC/BCE and died 26–36 AD/CE

in other words, the birth year of christ [according to tradition] does not fall within the range proposed by scholars working back from 525a.d.

wikipedia wrote:

In 525 Pope John I commissioned the scholar Dionysius Exiguus the task of establishing a feast calendar for the Church. Dionysius also estimated the year of Christ's birth, but through several errors in his calculations arrived at a date at least a few years later than the actual event.

we can rely on dates for events after 525a.d. but for years before that historians have had to work backwards,
sometimes with unexpected results.
for instance, they found that herod the great [who slaughtered the innocents, according to fable] died in 4b.c.,
i.e. several years before the traditional birth year of christ.

Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2009 3:32 am

The only thing that matters is that I have been here since 2006 and Eater started two years before that.

I demand that we restart the calendar thing with the birth of Eater!

Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2009 5:44 am

@r2d2 - you're right. I was off in the wrong direction. Embarassed

Blame it on the drops the eye doctor put in my eye - my pupil was dilated, and things were fuzzy.

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