I hope all readers of The Magazine of Santa Clarita are enjoying the Southern California winter weather and not gloating over it with your friends and relatives back east! This month, a voice actor asks about pronouncing the current year.
Q: How do you pronounce 2010? Half of the time I hear “two thousand ten” and the other half “twenty-ten.” Which is it? And therefore, how do you pronounce 2011? –Harry S, San Diego, CA
A: I insist that you pronounce this year “twenty-eleven.” If you listen to radio, television and the Internet, half of the time you’ll hear “twenty-eleven” and the other half “two thousand and eleven.” It seems that there’s general confusion on this year’s pronunciation, even among voiceover professionals. So what’s correct?
Look, when the 20th century dawned, people didn’t say, “Wow, it’s one thousand nine hundred!” No, they pronounced 1900 as “nineteen hundred,” as they did the previous eight centuries before that. The reason we’ve been used to pronouncing 2010 (and the last nine years previous) as “two thousand ten” is because at the turn of the millennium, it was cool to say “two thousand.” And “2001—A Space Odyssey” had been burned into the collective psyche for decades. So the “two thousand” appellation stuck for the first decade of the 21st century. But I say it’s over! We’ve had 10 years to get it out of our system! It should have ended after 2009. 2010 should have been pronounced “twenty-ten” all last year. Hopefully, 2011 (twenty-eleven) will start introducing the right way to state the year. After all, do you really think that when we get to 2020 we’ll be calling it “two thousand twenty?” Heck, no! We’ll all be calling it “twenty-twenty!”
Cashman Commercials © 2011 (twenty-eleven!)
Marc Cashman creates and produces copy and music advertising for radio and television, was named one of the “Best Voices of the Year” by AudioFile Magazine, and was the Keynote Speaker and Master Class instructor at the international voiceover conventions VOICE 2008 and 2010 in Los Angeles. Winner of over 150 advertising awards, and a working voice actor as well, he instructs voice acting of all levels through his classes, The Cashman Cache of Voice-Acting Techniques in Los Angeles, CA.
Marc can be contacted at cashcomm@earthlink.net or his website, www.cashmancommercials.com.