Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi.
How can we say the years as 2000,2001....

Can I say,for instance, twenty-oh one or two thousand one, or two thousand and one?
Could you please open my mind:)?

At least for me, non-native speaker mind you, the most natural sounds two thousand and one, two thousand and two etc. Twenty oh one sounds a little strange, I would not use it. Thats what my intuition tells. We will wait for the native speakers to confirm or correct it.

As a native speaker, "twenty-oh one" sounds a bit odd to me. I'd stick to "two thousand and..." until we get to 2010. "Two thousand and ten" and "twenty ten" both sound OK to me.

Everyone calls Kubrick's classic sci-fi movie "Two thousand and one", but I've heard it's sequel called both "two thousand and ten" and "twenty ten".

Of course, I don't claim to speak for the other 450 million or so native speakers Time to start a poll?

Native speakers also use "two-thousand-one" "two-thousand-two" when speaking (ie. without the 'and'). I personally never use the 'and' when speaking, and when writing we don't even need to consider these options.

I think the "and" is used in British and Irish English, but not in American or Canadian English. Not sure about Australians, New Zealanders or South Africans.

I believe you might be correct. I seem to remember an English cousin of mine in London (hyper)correcting me when I used the Can-Am structure during a visit. "You mean two-thousand-AND-one?" I thought nothing of it until now.

I think I use them both (with and without the and) interchangeably. Maybe that's another US West Coast difference .

It's a hell of a mouthful to say "two thousand and one" etc for those of us who survived the previous century. I agree that by 2010 we will be heartily sick of using the word "thousand" in there, so...........

I vote we all immediately begin using the abbreviated version "em em eye (eye)" etc and see if it catches on.

Harzer (31.1.ememiv)

"Two thousand and one" is too much of a mouthful? How long does it take to say "and"? Especially since "and" uually abbreviates to "n" in connected speech (if you're from the UK, anyway). I'll stick to "two thousand and one", or, in my dialect "two fahsan' an' one"