New Decade?

[flip_flop]

Had a conversation with a friend last night and she said 2011 was the start of a new decade - I disagreed.

Its not a new decade is it?

1990 was the start of the Nineties, 2000 was the start of the Noughties, so surely 2010 was the start of the new decade. There has been ten years between 2000 and 2010.

Am I missing something?

[albaqwerty]

I'm with your pal on this.

Think of it as when you're born. You are not 1 year old when you are born. You turn 1 after 365 days. (Contentious issue this tho :D)

[jackthehat]

When you start counting, you start at 1.
200-1
200-2
200-3
200-4
200-5
200-6
200-7
200-8
200-9
20(0)- 10(0)
That's your 10 years..........

[starone]

This argument goes on every ten years. I think you have to make your own mind up and decide what you want it to be. My husband always reckoned he was a year older than his actual age. A similar sort of argument. Personally, in the modern idiom, I can't get my head round it, so I just accept whatever is there. Waste of time worrying about it unless you are a philosopher.

[mike11111]

This is an old one, and derives from numerical confusion. In theory, a decade is any period of 10 years, regardless of start date. It is convenient to label historical periods as such, viz 1820s, 1930s &c, yet Alba is right in saying that the year ending in 1 is the first of the decade and that ending in 0 is the last. This chestnut last had an airing in Y2K which was heralded as the dawn of the third millennium, when in fact it was the last year of the 2nd millennium. The real dawn of the 3rd millennium, Jan 1st 2001, went largely unnoticed.

[Hopkirk]

You choose your way of looking at it by when you want to party.

In 1999 we partied as it changed to 2000.

Later in 2000 we changed our minds and decided 2000 was the last year of the old, and 2001 was really the start of the new.

Technically 2001 was the start of the new millennium.
After all the first millennium was 1 to 1000.

[AB Editor]

//Technically 2001 was the start of the new millennium. //

I don't think it was. 1 is a whole number, so the new millennium started in 2000 and up until 2001 we'd just had less than a year (In June the date could have been 2000.5).

JTH, when you "start at one" you've already counted the 12 months previous. Dates label time which has "happened."

[Ankou]

i think the technicality might be right or wrong ab since there was no year zero and it depends whether you take your decades from the gregorian system or not. the year 2000 was the 2001st year of the calendar hence the new millenium started.

[scrunge999]

If the 2nd millennium began in 2000 then the first one would only have had 999 years.

On 31st December 1900 Hardy wrote the poem "The Darkling Thrush" which contains lines that indicate that this date was the end of the century:

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

If it's good enough for Thomas Hardy it's good enough for me!

[scrunge999]

Oops - meant 3rd millennium - sorry...

[VHG]

Surely EVERY year is the start of a new decade, the ten years that follow.

[gingejbee]

VHG: ten out of ten for that answer (well, it is about decades).

[vivandorron]

All measurements start from zero. A baby is not born at one year old, but after 10 years from birth the child has lived a decade. The next decade starts from the day of its tenth birthday.

It's then child's play to work out that 2010 was the start of another decade.

Ron.

[jackthehat]

Correct, Ed.

Blame Tiny Denis...........!!

[vivandorron]

I think the Ed is quite good gnomerically.:-) ☺☺☺

Ron.

[R1Geezer]

Yes you are missing something.

2011 is the start of the decade in the same way that 2001 was the start of the millenium. The "start of the ???ies" terminolgy is wrong when referring to when a decade starts but generally accepted for what it is, ie the set of ten current alliterative titles for the era concerned, it has no basis in the calendar.

[R1Geezer]

vivand ron, of a child was born 1st Jan year 1 AD (there was no year zero). That child would be 10 years old 1st Jan year 11. we started at 1, not 0

[vivandorron]

Hi R1G.....I think this is a discussion which will still be around during the next decade, century, millennium.....ad infinitum.

However, I would ask...how many years (or months) do you say are between 1BC and 1AD.?

Ron.

[R1Geezer]

none!

[vivandorron]

Sorry to be somewhat pedantic. If there is no time factor between 1BC and 1AD then both points are Zero rated......Pity VAT wasn't.:-)

Ron.

[AB Editor]

Should we put the clocks back yet?