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?

A technically a decade is any ten year period - 1965 to 1974 is a decade.

Well the UK celebrated the millennium a year early ('99-'00 instead of '00-'01), so yes it is.

The argument about which year counts is about some arbitrary and slightly silly extra significance we attach to one year versus another.

What we are actually celebrating (in 2000 and at the start of the 20's) is the leading digit changing, as that's a relatively rare event.

The fact that we misname the celebration is unimportant. Pedants should not be claiming that the "millennium" was in 2001, they could be claiming (if they can't find a more important topic to use to bolster their self-esteem) that the year 2000 celebrations were misnamed.

So the time when Christ was born, surely that was '0'?? Then one year after that would be 1?? No?

hazell42 you seem bizarrely angry about this.

It isn't the end of the decade for another year. First decade = 1-10 so the end of 10 and start of 11 was the start of the 2nd decade. Extrapolated to 2011-2020 being the current decade and the next one starting 2021.

Not angry. Just pointing out inconsistencies in the arguments

As previously asserted, a decade can be any period of 10 years, so, if we take 1st January 2000 as being the beginning of a NEW millennium, which 99.999% of people did, then this is a new decade.
This is a circular arguement because while we all know (or should know if we think about it) that there is a discrepancy around the year 0, it is a semantic difference only, because it is popularly accepted to be this way and the year 0 is therefore conveniently ignored.
Its pedantry to argue otherwise, and, it is notable that this argument was started by a drunken uncle.
If it makes you feel better you could say 2020 is the end of a decade, and we are therefore "in the first year of" the new decade, which is accurate but a bit more o a mouthful than "it's a new decade", and amounts to the same damned thing

Maybe just a tad angry!

As a pp has pointed out, there was no year 0, which brings some people to the conclusion that each new decade starts on 1991, 2001, etc. But it depends on how you're defining a decade.

A decade is both 10 consecutive years, and a set named group of 10 years. For instance, 1995 - 2006 was a decade. But the decade from 1990 - 1999 was the 90s.

So the time when Christ was born, surely that was '0'?? Then one year after that would be 1?? No?

No. Someone wrote a famous thesis about it. Forget who now, though I should remember because i once write an article about them.
They started at the year 1, because, well.for all the reasons argued above

I was at school when the millennium was celebrated and remember my history teacher telling us to cool our heels, it wouldn’t be a new millennium until 2001.

By all accounts we didn’t start to have any leap days until 45BC so I’m really not convinced that any of our days are correctly counted.

If it makes you feel better you could say 2020 is the end of a decade,

By which of course I meant 2019.

I need a lie down

Its pedantry to argue otherwise

Oh indeed, which is what makes it such fun!

Decades are not counted ordinally like centuries. It’s not the 201st decade. It’s the twenties. Anyone who thinks “the decade” starts in 2021 is not even a pedant but just flat out wrong

Just goes to show how pointless it is picking an arbitrary date and getting excited and nostalgic about it when there isn't even agreement about whether the significant night was last night or a year from now.

All that millennium stuff was really weird to me

@busybarbara

Thank God for you!

OP I'm wondering if you are one of my friends, we had a very heated debate about this very thing last night! Five of us thought the new decade was about to begin but one was adamant that there was still a year to go. We have a very amusing video of said friend getting more and more frustrated as she couldn’t convince us she was right.

I am (reasonably) intelligent, but I’m fucking confused

@hellcarryingahandbag your not alone...!

The third millennium AD undoubtedly started on 1st January 2001. That's simply a matter of fact. When people celebrated it is a different question!

Equally the 2020s start today. That's equally not open to question.

I'm too hungover for this thread. Think I'll need to read it tomorrow.

Five of us thought the new decade was about to begin but one was adamant that there was still a year to go.

How were you identifying the decade? You were all right depending on which decade you meant! My seventh decade will start on a different date entirely, for example!

@hellcarryingahandbag

Have you read this? I posted it upthread and it explains it very well, I thought:

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/12/21/us/when-does-the-decade-end-begin-trnd/index.html

I did research on this as I was confused myself. The answer seemed to be - that you can consider it either way. The confusion comes because there was no year 0, so the new millennium started on 1st January 2001, not 1st January 2000. So you can consider the new decade of that millennium started on 1st Jan 2001, and therefore 1st Jan 2020 isn't the start of a new decade. However, as people have said, we would all say that the 80s started on 1st Jan 1980 and the 90s started on 1st Jan 1990 - so it is ALSO accurate to consider 1st Jan 2020 as a new decade.

"If you're going to be pedantic, you should at least be right"

xkcd.com/2249/

Crikey, there's some shaky logic on this thread...

I remember people debating this in 2000!