1909

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 12:39 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> in my Choosing a Variant course this quarter, we've spent some time on
> the currently hot topic, year names (and number names).  one of the
> students has asked me how people in 1906 referred to that year.  it's
> likely that there were several possibilities, of course.
>
> anyone have any information on the question?

At the beginning of the last decade I poked around a bit for evidence,
from class cheers and the like. From what I could tell anecdotally,
the most common formulation was "nineteen six." This is sometimes
claimed as a Briticism, but there are plenty of examples in the U.S.
as well.

See this alt.usage.english post for cites:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.usage.english/msg/e8a4080f14289670


--Ben Zimmer

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