What Decade Is It?
 

I keep hearing, and reading, this is the beginning of a new decade.
How can that be? There was no year zero, so the first decade would be years one through ten, right?
So logically, every decade would start with one (11,21,etc) and end with zero (00,10,20,etc), right? :confused:

It's both the last year and the first year depending on your view.
We had this argument in the new year of 2000 people said the millenium started in 2001.
who cares,

Programmers start counting from zero. Everyone else starts at 1.

So for most people 2010 is the last year of the first decade of the 21st century.

and pregnancy takes 10 months

In History we refer to the seventeen hundreds and the eighteen hundreds (1700s 1800s). I considered it a new millenium when we hit 2000. So, i consider that we are now in a new decade. Bloody hope so; else we'll have all those tv retrospectives to do all over again in 12 months time!

But doesn't the 17th century start with 1601? ;)

Sort of. It varies dependng on the historian. It's something of a moot point. Generally speaking we get by by being vague: blah blah blah the turn of the century blah blah .

Ask the next 100 people you meet to count to 10. See if they start with zero and end with 9, or if they start with 1 and end with 10.

Doesn't quite work that way though radar. Because if you;re just counting then '0' refers to nothing...an absence of whatever it is your counting. But the year '0' is a something. The year up to 1 is still a year.

Centuries are the counting of years. If counting begins at 1 so do centuries.

Assuming Zero is the point at which you begin counting, the number 1 is the passage of the first year, 10 is the passage of the first decade, and 100 is the passage of the first century.

Zero doesn't count. It's zero. It's the starting point. You measure from zero to 1, from 1 to 2, from 2 to 3, etc.

yebbut the year ahead is 2009. We are clearly using the year 2009 to denote the year we're in, not the year just gone.

No, the year is the 2010th, it's just not tallied until the end, when it becomes part of the total.

Fuck off you're confusing me :P

2nd decade of the 2000 millennium.
1. 2000
2. 2001
3. 2002
4. 2003
5. 2004
6. 2005
7. 2006
8. 2007
9. 2008
10. 2009

1. 2010

A child lives year one, but is not one year old, until the end when it's totaled.
During their year two, they are 1 year old, until the end when it's totaled.
See, it's not confusing at all. ;)

0 .1 .2 .3 .4 .5 .6 .7 .8 .9 1
rinse & repeat till infinity

I just realised in my earlier post i said 2009 instead of 2010. See...you;re confusing me!

@ Lj, that's how I see it.

There was no year zero.:p

The year '0' was actually the year 1BC. We jump from 1BC to 1AD. So, it's just a matter of nomenclature. The year existed.

From 1BC to 1AD is two years, which one of them was zero?

I though we were supposed to say BCE now... which is kind of vague and could include 0, neh?

I'm not good at doing what I'm supposed to do, how about you? ;)

Nope. From the start of 1AD to the end of 1AD is two years.

Zero wasn't a year it was the birth of Christ. A point in time.


[eta] what is BCE again?

Before common era I think.

That sounds like something out of an Asimov novel.

:zzz:

C'mon, from the start of 1BC to the end of 1AD is two years, not 1AD to1AD.
Yes! Exactly! So it starts with one and the tenth year to make a decade, is 10.

From Wiki

Yeah, it's the same thing except it now has a politically correct name.

I'm just too dumb to post in this thread. So there you have it.

So, the year 2000 was the end of the 20th century? and the year 1900 was the end of the 19th century? Just doesn't work for me. As soon as it ticks over into the next 10 it's a new decade, and as soon as it ticks over into the new hundred it's a new century.

Bleh.

Bugger this for a game of soldiers, I'm off to bed! :P

Goodnight, dear. :D

Does anyone honestly worry about this stuff?

Just dig up an old thread about when the new millenium started.

Ffs. I was going to bed at *looks at last post* five past one. What fucking time is it now? Oh that's right, it's half fecking four.

Made the mistake of checking my new itunes download of Hamlet...it's 3 hours long. I was just checking the first few minutes, because my last download was mislabelled and they'd given me the wrong programme. Ended up watching the whole damn thing.

Fun an'all, but was a really stoopid thing to do!

This is correct. As as Dana pointed out we are in the Twenty-first Century. Why? because the first one started at 0 and ended on the last year of 999. So the year of 1000 was the second century.

There was no zero.

At the end of year 1, there had been one year.
At the end of year 10, there had been one decade.
At the end of year 100, there had been one century.
At the end of year 1000, there had been one millenium.

It goes backwards the same way. The first century BC includes the years 1BC to 100BC, the second century BC goes from 101BC to 200BC, and so on. There's a zero point between 1BC and 1AD, but since there's no zero year, new decades, centuries, etc, will always start on a year ending with 1.

Interestingly, if there were a year zero, BC would still have the same problem. AD would go 0-9, 10-19, etc., but BC would still go from 1BC-10BC, 11BC-120BC, etc. To make it work in a way that marks new centuries with '00 years, we would need two year zeros, 0BC and 0AD.

This is done (though not with years) in some numbering systems.

You are right, there was no zero, it was BC. but there was a 1 - 99AD. Correct?

Which was 99 years long, not a century.

There was no year 1. There was no year 10. There was no year 100.

The whole friggin system of naming years was invented in the year that we now call 525 by Dionysius Exiguus. The whole system was invented and applied retroactively to over half a millennium.

The year 1 AD never existed in that name. It was a year that was named after the Roman Consuls of the time and the year of their terms.

So it's not like people were starting the counting at 1 or 0. The counting started at 532.

The 70s are a decade that consists of 1970-1979
The 80s are a decade that consists of 1980-1989
The 90s are a decade that consists of 1990-1999
This is all self evident.

The next decade fucked everyone up and caused all this confusion because nobody knew what to call it, but the new millennium started on 1/1/2000, and this new decade started on 1/1/2010.

I ended up calling last decade the Aughts, which is a dumb name, but I have no idea what to call this decade. The Tensies? I guess we're in the Tweens now and in three years we will be in the Teens.

Good point glatt. I forgot about the whole Roman Consuls thing and was to lazy to look it up. I was trying to wrap my head around the logic of it all and it was barely making sense.

It applies to any counting system that starts with one, though.
Nicknames like that are OK, and a decade can be any ten year period. Heck, it doesn't even need to start on Jan 1! You've been alive a decade when you turn 10, no matter when that was (allowing for leap years, of course). And, like you said, the "teens" won't even be a decade - it will be seven years long.

But if you want "the 20th century" to mean the same thing as "the 1900s", then "the first century" would only be 99 years long.

This is how I see it.

The aughts?

Over here we called it the Naughties. Is that just us, or do you have that there too?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I can live with that. The first century isn't well documented anyway. A little fudging there will be just fine.

This!

Man's been woken up on New Years Day.
Wife: Oy, wake up, it's 12 o'clock!
Man: No details. What Decade Is It?

2000 to 2009 - how about "the units"?

Dana, imagine you're a 9 year old kid. From the moment you were born until your first birthday they referred to your age as months. You had not reached a year yet. After a full year had passed, they referred to you as 1 year old.

If you are a 9 year old kid, and your 10th birthday is approaching. On your birthday, you have reached the end of your first decade because at this point you have lived 10 full years.

0 to 1
1 to 2
2 to 3
3 to 4
4 to 5
5 to 6
6 to 7
7 to 8
8 to 9
9 to 10


10 = 10 years have passed = 1 decade.

100 = 100 years have passed = 1 century

1000 = 1000 years have passed = 1 millennium

2000 = 2000 years have passed = 2 millennium

This means 1900 was the last year of the 19th century. 1901 was the first year of the 20th century.

2000 was the last year of the 2nd millennium and 2001 was the first year of the 21st century.

If:
Then 1899 to 1900 was the last year of the 19th century. It ended, technically, on Dec. 31, 1899.

Not:

I think the quality of this thread has decade

Oh, are you keeping score?

it's more of a half-score -a rimshot perhaps

This
and this


contradict each other.

No they don't. If you are nine, and about to turn ten, you are in year ten. If the calendar had started when you were born, the first year would be year one, and at the end you would be one year old. You would be ten years old at the end of year ten.

Sure, I get what you are saying, but I didn't think Radar said that.

Sorry I cannot process your trains of thought but this thread reminds me of the last Sunday morning show.

The news person said that no pet name for this last decade was made because no one wants to own it and now I know why. People can't even decide how to count the days in a year.

Well duh, one at a time. :rolleyes:

I think he did. Your tenth birthday is the end of your tenth year, and the end of the 1900th year is the end of the 19th century.

Your tenth birthday is the end of your 9th year. You begin a 10th year.

A human lifespan isn't counted in the same way as the earths.
It has leap years and leap seconds.




18th century

1701-1800


19th century
1801-1900


The Twentieth Century of the Common Era began on January 1, 1901 and ended on December 31, 2000. according to the Gregorian calendar, (2000 was the first century leap year since 1600).

In the Gregorian calendar, a Century leap year is a year that is exactly divisible by 400 (and, thus, as with every other leap year, qualifies for the intercalation of February 29). The years 1600 and 2000, for example, were century leap years; the century years of 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not century leap years. The next century leap year will occur in 2400. Century leap years always start on a Saturday, and the February 29 intercalation of such years is always a Tuesday.
The century year "divisible by 400" rule of the Gregorian calendar was considered an improvement over the previously utilized Julian calendar which had provided for a leap year every four years; this practice resulted, over the centuries, in too many leap days being added to the calendar and placing it out of step with the astronomical seasons.