Who knew the 21st century started in 2001?

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andyd1010
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Who knew the 21st century started in 2001?

Post by andyd1010 »

Today I learned that apparently centuries start in '01 and end in '00. So the 20th century ended in 2000 and the 21st century started in 2001.

I was thinking it could be a cool addition to the year and decade lists to have 20th century and 21st century lists on the main page.

I'm also curious whether "best of the century" lists on AM have been treated as '00-'99 or '01-'00.
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BleuPanda
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Re: Who knew the 21st century started in 2001?

Post by BleuPanda »

I'm assuming they're treated as 00-99 or whatever since that's what most people use.

I don't like the whole 'centuries really begin on the XXX1' thing. It all revolves around this idea that there was no 'year zero,' but so what? When we talk about centuries, we talk about 19XX or 20XX. The whole thing comes off as this pedantic 'did you know' factoid that will never have any actual effect on how people talk about decades or centuries. The idea that 2000 belongs to the 1990s or 1900s is just dumb; the whole identifying feature is what the thousands, hundreds, and tens digits are.
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andyd1010
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Re: Who knew the 21st century started in 2001?

Post by andyd1010 »

BleuPanda wrote:I'm assuming they're treated as 00-99 or whatever since that's what most people use.

I don't like the whole 'centuries really begin on the XXX1' thing. It all revolves around this idea that there was no 'year zero,' but so what? When we talk about centuries, we talk about 19XX or 20XX. The whole thing comes off as this pedantic 'did you know' factoid that will never have any actual effect on how people talk about decades or centuries. The idea that 2000 belongs to the 1990s or 1900s is just dumb; the whole identifying feature is what the thousands, hundreds, and tens digits are.
That's fine with me, and that's what I had always thought. It just surprised me when I saw that, and then I remembered that Lee Ann Womack's "I Hope You Dance," from 2000, was included in RIAA's Songs of the 20th Century. So I wasn't sure if more people operated under the premise that 2000 is in the 20th century than I realized.
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Re: Who knew the 21st century started in 2001?

Post by Jirin »

The demarcations between time are pretty arbitrary anyway, so why not celebrate at the same time as everyone else?
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bonnielaurel
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Re: Who knew the 21st century started in 2001?

Post by bonnielaurel »

I have always said 2001, otherwise the first century would only have lasted 99 years. Most of those millennium celebrations were one year early.
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Re: Who knew the 21st century started in 2001?

Post by Jirin »

I just figure, there's no real reason for January 1, 1 to be four years after the birth of Jesus Christ, one and a half weeks after the winter solstice except that's how it historically worked out. And the only reason to say one year is the period of the Earth around the sun is because that's a convenient metric that determines human living patterns.

And if you're going to adhere to the 1000 year period as the millennium, then the millennium actually ended on January 12, 2001, because of the 11 day skip in 1752 when we adopted the Gregorian calendar. And why do we only care about the power of ten, because we happen to have ten fingers? If we had 8 fingers we wouldn't be celebrating for another 30 years in the year 4000!

That's why I just celebrate when the numbers roll over, because the purist way has too much arbitrariness to it to begin with.
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Rob
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Re: Who knew the 21st century started in 2001?

Post by Rob »

andyd1010 wrote:Today I learned that apparently centuries start in '01 and end in '00. So the 20th century ended in 2000 and the 21st century started in 2001.
At the end of 2009 I was checking a lot of end-of-decade-lists, mostly for movies, and almost every, bloody article started with the statement that the decade wasn't over until next year, but they still went ahead and made their list anyway. I expect that to happen late 2019 again. With decades it strikes me as even more silly, as 2010's specifically mentions we are in the 10's.
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Listyguy
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Re: Who knew the 21st century started in 2001?

Post by Listyguy »

By definition, a decade is *any* period of 10 years. So unless they call their list "the best songs of the 202nd decade" they have done nothing wrong.

We don't label decades the way we label centuries, so this isn't really much of an issue.
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bonnielaurel
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Re: Who knew the 21st century started in 2001?

Post by bonnielaurel »

The twentieth century = 1901 - 2000
The nineteen hundreds = 1900 - 1999
The noughties = 2000 - 2009
The tennies = 2010 - 2019.
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bootsy
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Re: Who knew the 21st century started in 2001?

Post by bootsy »

bonnielaurel wrote: The noughties = 2000 - 2009
The tennies = 2010 - 2019.
Never heard of these two. Always heard 2000-2009 as the aughts.
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bonnielaurel
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Re: Who knew the 21st century started in 2001?

Post by bonnielaurel »

"Noughties" is often used in the U.K. The 1910s were sometimes called the teens, but that words means "teenagers" nowadays.
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Rob
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Re: Who knew the 21st century started in 2001?

Post by Rob »

Listyguy wrote: We don't label decades the way we label centuries, so this isn't really much of an issue.
Tell that to the listmakers who smugly are going to make a point of it that 2019 is not the end of the decade (and make a decade list anyway). This is going to happen and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
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