When I started learning English in junior school I was told that I had to pronounce the year 1997 nineteen ninety-seven and the year 2007 two thousand seven.
I've always followed the rule and pronounced the current year two thousand something, while refering to the last century with nineteen-something.
However I have, on several occasions, heard people talk about future years – e.g. 2050 in this tune's intro – and pronounce it twenty something.
This made me think it was ok to say, for instance, twenty seventeen when talking about the current year and I thought about it no more. Lately, in English class, I was talking to my teacher about a trip I did in 2012 and as he asked when, I answered: "That was in twenty twelve". And well by the look on his face I imediately corrected myself – "Oops, I mean two thousand twelve!" – and he was happy. But I did not get the occasion of asking him about the rule.
When will we stop refering to the current year as two thousand something and start saying twenty something?
Two thousand seventeen is already long and laborious to say, but in ten years? Two thousand twenty-seven is even worse. By then will we be "allowed" to say twenty twenty-seven? If not, when? Why not now? And what about the year 4456, do I have to say four thousand four hundreds fifty six or fourty-four fifty-six?
To make short, what is the rule here? I have no clue.
Thanks in advance!
P.S.: I also have no clue on how to hyphenate numbers but that's another story.
Best Answer
I am a native speaker with a careful ear. From my experience, I can tell you that when the millennium turned from 19xx to 20xx, we said "two thousand" plus the remainder throughout the aughts (01, 02, ..., 09). To use the "twenty" construction would have required acknowledging the zero digit: "twenty oh-eight, twenty-oh-nine" or "twenty-aught-seven" etc. Those were still heard a lot, however, as we were all new to the millennium and its numbering.
When it hit 2010, we started mostly saying "twenty-ten, twenty-eleven, twenty-twelve," etc., but it was not uncommon to hear "two thousand thirteen." This somewhat ambiguous pattern will likely continue throughout the teens.
You may be reasonably sure that once we hit the twenties, the "twenty-something" construction will overwhelm the "two thousand" one because "twenty" is still easier to say than "two thousand," and by that time it will also be more felicitous to use because "twenty twenty" has already made inroads into the general ear due to its appearance in popular culture as a standard of vision, etc.
Addendum
Just to add to an appreciation of the discomfort we feel with the awkwardness of "two thousand", consider the year 2000 itself. It's almost invariably referred to using the confection "the year 2000." Compare uses of "the year 2000" vs, say, uses of "the year 2012" in the Wikipedia articles on those years: "the year 2000" is referenced five times in the three-paragraph article (four in text, once in footnotes), while "the year 2012" in its article is given only once (all other times referring to that year simply as "2012").
Note that the millennial year was sometimes referred to as "Y2K"—although that term is blurred because Y2K could refer to the year itself or (more often, I think) to the turning of the millennium as a concept.
Now, given that we had primed our ears for "two thousand" by using "the year 2000," and that for thirty-odd years we had the example of the very popular Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which everyone I ever heard talk about the film referred to as Two Thousand One and not Twenty-Oh-One, it seems reasonable to suppose that these uses laid a "two thousand" groove from which it was somewhat difficult to extricate our tongues.
Note that I am not saying it was impossible: people still did use "twenty-oh" while the rest of us muddled along doggedly using "two thousand" until 2010 (when, again, not all of us switched). All I am saying is that the millennium shook up the way we pronounce years, and we are slowly returning to the old pattern, the way ripples in a pond slowly die out after a rock has been tossed in.
Order will be restored. Be patient.
Addendum
Last night I was watching a news program and heard the announcer refer to events that happened in "two thousand nine and twenty ten" ... which was interesting.