1909

[Jonathan Lighter]

My NYC grandparents never used the forms "nineteen and..." or
"nineteen-ought...."  The only form I recall hearing from them (or from
anyone else outside of the movies) was "nineteen-oh...."

JL


On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 12:58 PM, Benjamin Zimmer <
bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: 1909
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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