second best

OMFG is the best

"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"

Is "this decade" this decade, not yet a day old?


rmw

This saying is, and has been, standard daily vocabulary in Minnesota amongst those of us of Scandinavian descent since at least the early 1900's, if not earlier.  The rest of the world has just caught on to it.

Really, using the proper relfexive pronoun would dictate that we say "you betchaself".  

But it doesn't really have the same ring.   

Engineering is not the science behind building.  It is the science behind not building.   

rmw ... 2000 to 2009 = 1 decade.

ja, hey, youbetcha.
 

This decade does not end until December 31, 2010.
2000 was the last year of the second millennium, the last year of the twentieth century, and the last year of the two hundredth decade.
2010 is the last year of the 201th decade.
There is no year zero.  The Western calendar starts with AD 1.

"This decade does not end until December 31, 2010."

Only if you're talking about "the 201th decade".  Most people don't count decades that way.  The numerals in the year provide a handy way to refer to chunks of time.  Thus "the Eighties" refers to years with 8 in the 2nd position from the right, not to the 199th decade since the start of the calendar.  Likewise, "the 1900s" and "the 20th century" are not exactly the same thing, so people who want to be pedantic about when the turn of "the century" is need to be more specific about which century exactly they're talking about.

I mean, if you're gonna be pedantic, you need to go all the way.

Hg

p.s. I'm with ornerynorsk--"you betcha" is nothing new.  Was "OMG" used in any ironic sense in the OP?

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

perhaps, but it seldom is in the UP.
 

Wasn't You betcha used repeatedly in Fargo (the movie as well as the City)?

Even made the quotes..
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116282/quotes

drawn to design, designed to draw

Hg, is it possible we are on the same page?  You betcha!

Rod

I'm rather a fan of "ZOMG" meself.  It's like OMG, but bigger.  And in the border state of Texas, we have ¡ADM!

Hg

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

I do speak a bit of Spanish, Hg, being from El Paso...However, my expletives tend to be slightly more profane....

Rod

So what's Spanish for OMFG?

Hg

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

maybe AC or HDP?
 

Quote (CorBlimeyLimey ):

rmw ... 2000 to 2009 = 1 decade.

2009-2000 = 9  How can that be a decade?

jgailla's explanation makes very logical sense to me.

 

Quote (HgTX):

Only if you're talking about "the 201th decade"

I thought they were  talking about this  decade, the 201th.

HgTX  Your numerology does not make any sense to me but then yuor IQ is probably some exponential of mine so maybe I am just being too simple minded.

2000 = 1
2001 = 2
2002 = 3
2003 = 4
2004 = 5
2005 = 6
2006 = 7
2007 = 8
2008 = 9
2009 = 10

It's the classic question of starting at 1 or 0.  
 

201th?

or

201st?  

Engineering is not the science behind building.  It is the science behind not building.   

So according to this theory our present calender started in the year AD minus 1?

Didn't jgailla and HgTX cover that already?  

Where does -1 come from?  I get language confusion but I thought math was less dependant on language.

0
1
2
.
.
.
100 = 1 century
101
102
.
.
.
200 = 2 centuries
x 10 = 2000 = twenty centuries

If 2009 is a decade, then you must start at 1999 or
2000-1 = 1999 to get 10 = 1 decade.

Now go back 20 centuries and you have AD-1.

You are likely now saying to yourself, "this is like argueing mathematics wih pa Kettle."

You betcha!

For me a decade starts, for example, at 12:00:01 (midnight + 1 second) January 1st 2000 and ends at 12:00:00 midnight December 31st 2009.

This is again a case of logic vs. accepted conventions.

I do agree that by the accepted convention 2000-2009 makes the decade of 00's (oughties??). It may, however, not be logical, but that is beside the point.

If we were to start a new calendar system, we would start the day and the year with 1 not 0. There is no 0 date in a month or a 0 month in a year nor was there a year 0000.

But if you ask, would the year 1980 be part of 80's? The intuitive answer would be yes, although not logical. But over time intuition has resulted in accepted convention that 1980 would be part of 80's and so on.



 

Rafiq Bulsara
http://www.srengineersct.com

what's the logic in selecting a non-intuitive decade naming convention?  Is there any more important goal than making the system simple for _people_ to work with?
 

metman, if you start at 0, wouldn't year 99 be the one hundredth year?

If you're going to be sticklers for precisely how many decades, centuries, years, etc. may have passed since midnight entering January 1 of the year 1 (which didn't actually exist at the time), don't you need to start worrying about Julian vs. Gregorian dates?  Aren't we a week or two off from a precisely even number of year-long periods of time since 01/1/0001?  Shouldn't the true pedant be celebrating the start of the 21st century, meaning the 21st 100-year-long period since 1/1/1, somewhere in mid-January of 2001 (or maybe it's mid-December 2000, I forget how that works)?  No?  You mean, you're bowing to a lowly CONVENTION about how years are referred to, and not some strict "logic" of elapsed intervals?  Whaddaya know.

Here's the thing.  Any 10-year period is a decade.  That's what "decade" means.  It means "10-year period".  It doesn't mean "10-year period beginning some even multiple of 10 years after the beginning of year 1".  So when someone makes a reference to "the" decade, there's no absolute determination, other than the speaker's intent, as to which decade they're talking about.  Or which century, or which millennium.

"The 20th century" is shorthand for "the 20th century starting with year 1", because the ordinal "20th" implies we've been counting them from the start.  This is different from "the 1900s", which is a very similar century, but off by a year from "the 20th century".  When you say "turn of the century", that century could be the 20th, or it could be the 1900s.  They're both centuries, and they're both centuries that are referred to in common parlance.

But I have never, ever, not ever, not even once, heard in normal conversation a reference to the 197th decade.  The Sixties, yes.  The 197th decade, no.  So our decade references aren't couched in terms of starting from the first one and counting up from there.  They're referring instead to the dates themselves.  So trying to say that "the turn of the decade" has some reference to an even multiple of 10 years from The Year One really has no merit in language as it is actually used by real people.  You can't even bring logic into it; logic comes in if you're talking ordinal decades like the 197th.  Picking a handy reference to a 10-year chunk of time has nothing to do with a count-up from a set starting point.

When people get extra-excited over century, millennium, decade changes, they're reacting to what is effectively an odometer turnover, and we loves us our odometer turnovers.  The year number is going to look much more different from now on than it did before.  We're changing more than the usual right-place digit.  So we have a bigger party and more reminiscing than usual when that year flips over to zero.  Why not?  It's no more illogical than any other year reference that's supposed to be somehow The Year Of Our Lord when the Lord in question was born several years before the start of that number sequence, mixed in with a month system and year start date left over from the prior religious administration.  It's a convention, and nothing more.  You can only take arguments from "logic" so far within a convention-based system.

Those who get all huffy about how X time period doesn't end in ###9, by gum it ends in ###0, are trying to make themselves look like they know more than other people.  But they're missing a whole lot of context, and how is that any more informed or logical?

Hg, pedanticker than thou, yupyoubetcha

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

If "decade" means any possible contiguous 10 year period, then "this decade" could mean any of 10 possible decades making it rather ambiguous. And that number assumes 1 year as the smallest increment. Change it to month, day, or nano-second, the ambiguity increases.

"Year" likewise means a contiguous set of 365 (sometimes 366) days, but "this year" is understood to be the calendar year 2010 which has a clear beginning and ending.

For "this decade" to have any possible unambiguous meaning, then, like "this year," it must have a commonly understood beginning and ending.   

Well, since I made the OP and, obviously did not transmit my thoughts to most of you, I meant the "decade just past"...ie, from 2000 through 2009 !  Apparently my sarcasm was a bit too subtle, eh?

Rod

Quote:

"this year" is understood to be the calendar year 2010 which has a clear beginning and ending.

Not necessarily.  It depends on context; a year between birthdays or a fiscal year are but two examples where this is not true.

"Good to know you got shoes to wear when you find the floor." - Robert Hunter
 

==> For "this decade" to have any possible unambiguous meaning, then, like "this year," it must have a commonly understood beginning and ending.
Agreed, but before you can have a commonly understood beginning (the ending is always relative to the beginning), you must have an agreed upon context.
 

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

Quote (KENAT):

metman, if you start at 0, wouldn't year 99 be the one hundredth year?  

Yes, "perzactly" as some say in West Virginia.  Just like some are prone to say the 19th century when you is talkin say 1830.  However, when you reach the end of the 100th year the 99 rolls over to 100 and now you have 100 years as opposed to the 100th year.  Semantics right?  Like Hg says the odometer rolls over from 99 to 100.

Agreed there is nothing magic about the non-number zero but why make it complicated?  If you want to say 2009 is the end of a decade then that decade must begin at 1999 not 2000.  9 years is not equal to 10 years peroid.

I guess you just can't get there from here!

Kenat...you made a table...I used my fingers...didn't even need the toes this time.

==> If you want to say 2009 is the end of a decade then that decade must begin at 1999 not 2000.
If you're including 2009 as part of the decade, i.e., that 2009 is the 10th year of that decade, then that decade begins in 2000.
2000 -  1
2001 -  2
2002 -  3
2003 -  4
2004 -  5
2005 -  6
2006 -  7
2007 -  8
2008 -  9
2009 - 10

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

Ron, I would have used pinkies but didn't have a camera handy to post a pic.

metman, you can't subtract the beginning number of a range from the end number of a range to get the total number of items in a range, because you lose the first one that way.  By your logic, the "official" 20th century, 1901-2000, is also only 99 years because 2000-1901=99.  It doesn't work that way.

We do often subtract years when we're trying to figure out how long something went on for.  You look at a tombstone and see "1903-1944", and you subtract in your head and say, "Oh, he was 41."  But that's because you're making an assumption that the start point was around the same time of year as the end point.  If he were born in early 1903 and died in late 1944, he'd be pushing 42.  If he were born in late 1903 and died in early 1944, he'd only be 40.  41 is just the midrange.  In the case of decades and centuries, you know your start point and end point exactly.  January 1 of the first year, December 31 of the last year.  So you can't just subtract the year.

Hg

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

I think this horse has been beaten silly, folks.

You betcha hey.

He Says "When were you born"
She Says "August 27th"
He says "What Year"
She says (with a pause) "Every Year!"

You can be exactly right figuring the years, but you could miss a Great Party!

We're not on this earth for a long time,
We're here for a Good Time.

Rerig.....Happy New Year