Info Cloud - Teaching Topic: The Decade Without a Name (2013/12/05)

Teaching Topic: The Decade Without a Name 

In the late 1990's, many people worried that on January 1st 2000, all of our computers would shut down and civilization would come to a standstill.

Equally worrisome was what we would call the coming decade, spanning from 2000 to 2010.

Some suggested the O's, the zeros, the zips, the nadas, and the most creative suggestion of all, the naughties.

But we never could come up with a term.

Right now, it seems the name we use most to refer to the first decade of the 21st century is "the first decade of the 21st century." Lame.

Well, it's not very often that English failed to accommodate are need for a simple descriptive word, but this time it did.

And it was painful. Was this language not rich enough or flexible enough to provide a word for the trivial linguistic problem. We were all reminded that, yes, English does have its limits.

Well, what are people going to call this decade. The teens? If we take our cue from last century, we might call it the 2010's, but that sounds weird, right? I just can't wait for the 20's to get here.

Well, we'll just have to wait a few years.

還記得上個世紀, 每個十年的單位都有一個名稱,
比如說, the seventies 70年代 / the eighties 80年代/ the nineties 90年代
但進入二十一世紀後, 人們突然詞窮了,
有什麼名詞可以用來稱呼從2000年到2009年呢?
其實有很多不同的建議,
像是
the O's
the zeros
the zips
the nadas
the naughties
因為 naught 在英式英文表示零
但這些字都沒有被民眾接受
最後只好用 first decade of the 21st century

現在我們要進入第二個十年, 問題來了,
是要用teens? the 2010's?
到目前還是沒有一個統一的稱呼,
看來只有到2020年時, 才會有一個正式的十年單位名稱