Anna - nobody says "Nineteen ninety AND nine" because people don't say ninety and nine. They say ninety nine.

why our english words are different to british words

Nobody ever said "Nineteen ninety AND nine" for 1999.

Good point by Joshua - technically it should be two thousand and ten but removing and adds no ambiguity. Not sure if any other language has any form as short as twenty ten but it's perfectly simple to understand and adopt.

Hi,
in academic British use, I think it is rather "two thousand and ten". "Twenty ten" is of a lower language register (variety). May be our seek of easiness makes us violate somehow grammar rules.
thank you for the question.
cheers

Sue,

I have heard other people complain about the issue you brought up, in which "two thousand and ten" is derided for its technically meaning 2000.10. I never really got the fuss.

A check written for $2000.10 is "two-thousand dollars and ten cents", but as "cents" must be added to the end, it should be evident that "and" does not relay the information of "decimal point"; rather, it means "plus". Thus two and two make four, two-thousand and ten hundredths of a dollar make $2000.10 and the year two-thousand and ten unambiguously (I should hope) means 2010 (since, after all, nobody is going to think that there was a year two-thousand and ten hundredths).

Bob

First of all,to Gail, if we wait Ten years it will only be 2020 not 2101. Next, mathematically, AND in math is the decimal point as in 4.7 This is read as four AND seven tenths. SO 2010 is just Two thousand ten. Think about how you write numbers on checks, the AND comes in between the dollars aaaaand cents! $456.78 would be four hundred fifty six AND seventy eight hundredths dollars.

I was lured in to my first Q&D comment when you said: Britons tend to use the "and"

To be honest I'm not entirely sure about Britons but I would be fairly confident that they would be like us Australians where there is no 'tend' at all. The only place where omitting the 'and' is acceptable is when we are allowing Americans to say it their way. You won't hear an Australian omitting it, ever.

If we are to pronounce a year the long way, or any long number, there will always be an 'and'. "Five hundred and sixty seven", to our ears, if you omit it then you'd sound very out of place.

Cheers

As far as what we call this decade and the one just passed I think we look to the conventions of the last century. It seems we refer to 1900-1909 as the turn of the century, and 1910-1919 as the early 20th century. Otherwise we tend to use historical markers such as pre-WWI to mark those early years. We then quickly adopt the convention of calling the decades by their last two digits, for example the 50's or the 80's.

Perhaps we will refer to the first decade of this century as 'the new millenium' or 'post 9/11'. What 2010-2019 will be called? Who knows? But I can foresee that in the third decade we will return to the convention such as the 20's.

We busy modern folks will always opt for the quicker, less awkward-sounding pronunciation.

Two-thousand-ten won't last long. We'll soon settle down to Twenty-ten. And if we don't, just wait ten years.....there's no way we'll be saying Two-thousand-one-hundred-and-one.

The tip for the "and" in Brit parlance is correct. "Twenty ten" seems the way to go for this Brit, but not universally used over here.

The reference in the podcast to the Spanish being "two thousand...etc" holds true in French too - this year would be "deux mille dix". French was this way in the previous century, e.g. "mille neuf cent cinquante-cinq" (one thousand, nine hundred and fifty-five) or sometimes "dix-neuf cent, cinquante cinq" (nineteen hundred and fifty-five). But I've never heard "dix-neuf, cinquante-cinq" (nineteen, fifty-five).

For decades, French has the easy way - "les annees soixante" - the sixties. Follows through for all decades". So, this decade is "les annees dix". Obviously, confusion in any language will happen when we try to work out whether it means the 1920s or the 2020s...

Canadian & Belgian French likely a bit different. They don't use the 'four twenties and ten' routine to mean 90, etc. So, 1990-1999 was probably 'les annees nonantes' or something, rather than 'les anness quatre-vingt dix'.

As an aside, does anyone know why US English dropped the "and" from numbers such as 150 (which a Brit would *always* say as "one hundred and fifty")?

I think the two-number convention of dates in English stems from the cumbersomeness of the word "thousand". "Thousand" is just not a word easily said quickly. In French, for example, the current year of "deux mille dix" rolls off much more easily than the "th" and "s" laden word thousand. Imagine if "thousand" were something easier to say, like "kilo". English speakers would have no problem saying that World War II ended in "one kilo forty-five" and that the current year is "two kilo ten". But "thousand" is just so inconvenient that a two-number speaking system for the year was invented to get around the verbal obstacle.

In Hebrew, it would be unheard of to say "19, 85" or "20, 10." It's always "1,000, 900, 85" or "2000 and 10" (the "and" seems to drop out after 19, but that's just my impression).