[Vocabulary] How to say years in English?

[beachboy]

2008

1) Two-thousand eight.
2) Two-thousand and eight.
3) Twenty - oh - eight.

I know 1 and 2 are correct. What about 3? And which one is more common in everyday English?

 

[bhaisahab]

I use 2). I have heard 1) from Americans. I have never heard 3).

 

[emsr2d2]

It must be something to do with it starting with "20" because we say "nineteen oh eight" for 1908, but for some reason 2008 doesn't naturally follow the same pattern.
For 2018, I use both "twenty eighteen" and "two thousand and eighteen".

 

[GoesStation]

If you look at writing from the first decades of the twentieth century you'll see similar uncertainty about what to call the years. It was apparently common to say nineteen hundred and nine for quite a while, but eventually [nineteen] oh nine became natural. I think we're going through a similar transformation now. I suspect twenty oh eight and the like may never catch on because we prefer strings of words to be separated by consonants where possible.

 

[jutfrank]

Twenty oh eight is becoming increasingly common in BrE and I predict that within a decade or so it will be the normal way.

 

[SoothingDave]

It was around twenty-ten that we began speaking that way. Two thousand (and) four, two thousand (and) eight was more normal in the first decade of the century.

 

[Tarheel]

I call this year two-thousand-eighteen.

 

[Rover_KE]

It's twenty eighteen for me, as I was one of the few who said twenty hundred from the start.

 

[Tdol]

Twenty oh eight is becoming increasingly common in BrE and I predict that within a decade or so it will be the normal way.

I wouldn't bet against you. In the early years of the century, I did hear some civil servants and bureaucrats using two oh eight, a form that didn't catch on and I haven't heard used recently.