You might be looking at 2020, and trying to figure out what the dispute was. I suspect most of you saw those four digits and thought of them as "twenty-twenty". After all, aren't we nearing the end of twenty-nineteen? Didn't the roaring twenties take place in nineteen-twenty? And that is certainly the camp that I would fall into. But it turns out there are some who are calling next year "two thousand twenty".
My first thought was "Really?" My next thought was "Hmmm". On the one hand, I would never say One Thousand Nine Hundred Fifty-Seven. The year would be half over before I finished. But that's not a problem with, say, 2019, or 2020, or 2021. Sure, the 'long' way has one extra word, but it somehow sounds more formal, more scientific. And when I give someone my office phone number, I finish with "five-six-zero-six", rather than "five-six-oh-six"... even though zero is a longer word than oh. Of course, I don't say "five thousand six hundred six", but that's different.
So I think I'll have to say the jury is still out on how to pronounce 2020. I've been saying twenty-nineteen for the past year, but I might try the 'long' way of saying 2020 for a month or so, and see what I think.
But then the next question was 'Does the next decade begin at the beginning of 2021, or the end of 2020'. And surprisingly, the answer is No. The next decade begins January 1, 2021. While I was ready to argue with this answer, the explanation has me stepping back for a moment.
While I'm still somewhat suspicious about how experts determined these things **, it's been pointed out that the people living at that time, would not have called a year "0", as that idea would have been regarded as nonsense. And I can understand that. Which means that the first year AD was called 1 AD, and the year before that was called 1 BC. Yes, I know, that raises all sorts of questions, and you're not going to find those answers here, but you WILL find an explanation about the new decade.
So.. if the first year was year 1 (rather than year 0), that means that the first decade ran from January 1, 0001, through December 31, 0010. And that makes sense to me. Which means that the most recent decade began January 1, 2011, and will end on December 31, 2020.
Unless.... you're looking at Julian calendars, Jewish calendars, Chinese calendars, or some other calendar... in which case I have no idea what to tell you. Except that if someone invites you to a party to celebrate the new decade... whether the party is the end of 2019, the beginning of 2020, or the beginning of 2021, you should say yes!
And of course if someone offers you a good cup of tea (which for me, is typhoo tea), you should always say yes, no matter what the date is!
**People living in the years BC certainly didn't call those years BC. And people living at the time that we changed from BC to AD didn't know they should suddenly start counting the years over again. And of course how did they know when to start, so that the BC years ended and the AD years began? So when did someone draw the artificial line between BC and AD? Because it certainly wasn't the people who were living in both years. But that's a topic for another Teapot Musing.. or perhaps not!
