Is 2020 a new decade or not?!

[Utterlybutterly8]

Can someone help settle this for me please? I popped round to a neighbour’s house last night for a quick drink before midnight. We were talking about 2020 and I said that I couldn’t believe we were entering a whole new decade, or something along those lines. One of the other guests said that it’s not actually a new decade and won’t be until 2021. I’ve never heard this before so was a bit confused - 2020 is the start of a new decade isn’t it? I’ve noticed some of the papers are referring to it as such. AIBU to think he was wrong?

How do you work that out Tumbleweed101? Shall we go over counting again?

Not that it matters but if you go back to day 1 and think logically the first 10 years ended on the last day of year 10 so strictly speaking each subsequent decade ends on the last day of years with 0 at the end

No! The last day of year 10 happens when you get to 10 not at the end of year 10. We don't count years in advance. When you get to 1 you have had one year.

There is no year zero. The first year in the modern era [AD] was 1AD. Therefore the tenth was 10AD and the second decade started at 11AD. The second millennium did't start till the end of the year 2000, and we’re still n the same decade we have been for the last 9 years.

We don't count years in advance. When you get to 1 you have had one year.

In terms of age of things and people yes, but not in calendars. People start at age 0. The calendar starts at 1.

Technically no, but in practical and realistic terms, yes.

In terms of age of things and people yes, but not in calendars. People start at age 0. The calendar starts at 1

1 what? If you count in years then I see that but surely that is why we break it down further into days/weeks? Between zero and one year things happened and that time exists. When you get to one, a year has actually happened. As I said we don't count years in advance. Therefore when we got to 2020, twenty-two lots of blocks of ten years have existed, 22 lots of decades have happened and so we begin a new decade.

Okay...so we're now in the 21st century, but it's 2020....when did the 21st century begin...2000 or 2001 and why the 21st and not the 20th....

Or are you saying where we are counting from did start in advance? Interesting but now my head hurts! Lol

Centuries (and millenniums) do begin on the 1 year because they are counted from the year 1. So 2000 was the last year of the 20th century and the second millennium.

If you count decades from the year 1, then they follow the same pattern. So 2020 is the last year of the 202nd decade. However, we don't normally count decades in this way.

It is far more common to refer to decades in terms of their last two digits. So the 1980s began in 1980, and the 2020s begin in 2020.

Arrays start at zero

Your neighbour is technically right but they’re being very pedantic. My dad bored me with this pedantry in 2000 too! .

Technically no. Labour did bring forward the millennium celebrations & people knew this at the time.

A decade could be any ten years. 1983-1993 is a decade as it's ten years. Hence you can refer to something that ran during that time as occurring over a decade.

That’s how I view it. Time is just a concept anyway. It doesn’t mean anything.

1 what? If you count in years then I see that but surely that is why we break it down further into days/weeks? Between zero and one year things happened and that time exists. When you get to one, a year has actually happened.

All true. But we mark it as 1. There was no year that was defined as 0. Before 1AD the year before was 1BC. Not 0. So when someone is born we don't say they are 1. But when we started the calendar we defined a point as being "1". We didn't define any point as being "0". So if we started at 1 we start the next decade at 11.

The 1920s were the 1920s and the year 1920 was obviously in that decade.

It’s the same for the 2020s.

Was the year 2000 in the previous century then? Was 1990 actually in the 80s? No.

When you are born, you aren't born '1'. You are born '0' as it were, and you then spend the next 12 months to be come 1.

So count that as Year 1 (when you are born to your 1st birthday) so Year 2 is when you are 1 to your 2nd birthday etc etc.
So given most of us work in A.D. and B.C. .... As soon as Jesus was born (theoretically) that is A.D.1. There was no A.D.0. But he spent A.D.1 going from birth to 12 months old. When he turned 1, he's going into A.D.2 So when he turned 10, that was AD11.

Now fast forward a couple of thousand years .... and yes there were pedants, my brother included, that people celebrated the millennium on 2000 when it should have been 2001 strictly speaking. But we all go for the change in first digit as it's more visual. But that's why the pedants will tell you you're wrong to say this is the start of a new decade.

If your counting out apples do you start with 0 or 1?

This is the tenth year of the decade. Next year is the first year of the new decade.

Was the year 2000 in the previous century then? Was 1990 actually in the 80s? No.

Um, yes, I'm afraid.

It actually depends what you mean by "previous century". But if you mean "periods of 100 years since 1AD" (when the Gregorian calendar began), yes, it was the hundredth year of the previous period rather than the first year of this one.

I never got any of this...year one was when? When it got to 100 (or 101 ) it was already the second century?....
I think we should start again after Brexit....

"If your counting out apples do you start with 0 or 1?"

There is a difference between counting and measuring. When we talk about the year 2020 we are counting years since the (nominal) birth of Christ, as if we were counting apples.

When someone reaches their first birthday we are measuring the elapsed time since their birth, and this does start at zero, although we don't normally refer to babies as 0 years old rather 1 month or 11 months.

This is indeed the 10th year of the decade that started in 2011, but it is far more conventional to refer to decades that start in a year ending in zero, such as the 1930s and so on.

Surely the problem is that the Gregorian calendar is wrong and a year 0 should have existed.

So 1 BC would have been one year before Jesus’ birth and the AD dates would be Jesus’ birthdays? The error was that they didn’t include an actual year 0 as the day Jesus was born?

Or is that because AD is “in the year of our Lord” so they numbered in nonsensically- with year 1 being the first year of Jesus’ life. Even though that’s illogical and no one would design it like that now.

Anyway, it’s a bit silly worrying about 2020 vs 2021 based on this. Clearly the 20s is a thing and this is the decade we’ve just entered. Everything else would be bizarre.

Technically it's not the end of the decade until the last day of 2020 is completed, not as the first day begins. Just as a baby isn't a year old until the last day of its first year, not the day it's born. It's in its first year but it isn't a year old.

The zero year is the last year of the decade, not the first. People get all excited about the third position number rolling over, that's all. They misunderstand how counting works. 🤷🏻‍♀️

You won't make any friends insisting on it, but you will be right if that's what matters to you. It's good mental discipline to get you head round it, though, just for your own satisfaction.

The first year was year 1. Therefore on January 1st, year 10, we had had 9 years and hadn't completed a decade. Therefore the new decade doesn't start till 2021.

But it really doesn't matter.

I don’t think roman numeracy used 0 or understood the importance of it.

"Surely the problem is that the Gregorian calendar is wrong and a year 0 should have existed."

Well yes but at the time the AD year numbering system was introduced (600? 700? I forget), the concept of zero was not well understood, and Pope Gregory did not change the numbering system (in fact only leap years were affected by the 1588 Gregorian reforms).

If we introduced a new calendar today, measuring from some epoch, it would probably start from zero.