Year names

[Jim Parish]

Recently, I've been participating in a LiveJournal discussion on the
pronunciation of year names. The original poster, who is Swedish, was
struck by President Bush's use of the phrase "two thousand seven" to
refer to the current year; the corresponding name in Swedish would
translate as "twenty-hundred and seven".

I replied that this was standard usage, with "twenty-oh-seven" as a rarer
possibility (and "twenty-hundred and seven" an impossibility), but
pointed out that in later decades "two thousand seventeen" and
"twenty-seventeen" would be possibilities, with the former being
somewhat more formal.

A British reader then commented that, to his(?) ear, "two thousand
seven" sounded odd; he preferred "two thousand and seven", with
"twenty-oh-seven" a rarer option. Likewise, he preferred an "and" in,
e.g., "two thousand and seventeen". He also pointed out that, though
he had never heard anyone use "twenty hundred seven", "nineteen
hundred and seven" was perfectly standard. As another data point, he
said, "1066" is always pronounced "ten-sixty-six" in English history
classes.

So, I'm curious. What sorts of variation - in register, dialect, or what
have you - are there in the verbalization of year names? Is there, e.g.,
such a clear division between AmE and BrE as the above suggests?

Jim Parish

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