What Will the Next Decade be Called?

A debate is going on as to what will the next decade be called after the last decade, touted as the "noughties", came to an end with the New Year.

Experts are already arguing about how history will officially refer to 2000-2009, a similar dilemma is already emerging with naming the new decade.

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Macquarie Dictionary editor Sue Butler has said that while referring to the '20s to the '90s was simple enough, there was no convention for naming the first two decades of a century.

The "Tens", "Twenty-Tens" or "Teens" are arguably the most logical names for describing the next 10 years.

But Butler said that "Teens" might not be accepted because it had an existing meaning and people don't want any ambiguity when coining a new term.

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Other options could be the "Teenies" or the "Twenteens" - an amalgamation of "twenty-hundred" and "teens".

"When you get to the '20s and '30s it becomes straightforward, but the first two decades are not so easy," the Daily Telegraph quoted Butler as saying.

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Irene Poinkin, a member of the ABC's Standing Committee on Spoken English, said there was still no official method of referring to the first two decades of this millennium.

She raised doubts about whether the noughties would stick as the years rolled on.

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The term is listed in the Macquarie Dictionary, but only as a colloquialism.

Macquarie University emeritus professor of linguistics Pam Peters said it was probably too casual for historians to accept.

The obvious solution is to call it the "Two-Thousands".

But such a moniker could be confused with the entire century of 2000-2099, just as we refer to 1900-1999 as the "Nineteen-Hundreds".

Source-ANI
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