[General] 1990's

[Marina Gaidar]

Hi everyone!

That's obvious that 1980's should be read as the eighties, but how we should read this 1900's? Or this 1600's? A simple thing, but I admit that I don't know it

Thank you in advance!

 

[Barb_D]

By the way, do not use an apostrophe to make the decade/century plural.
The 1980s, the 1990s, etc.

There is no clear-cut way to do this. If you say "The sixteen hundreds" it sounds like the entire century. The first decade of the 1600s is clear. I've heard "aughts" but not by anyone in casual conversation. We have the same problems with this decade too. 2010, 2011, 2012 - they were not the "teens."

 

[probus]

First, punctuation. There is no reason to use an apostrophe. Write 1980s, 1900s, 1600s etc. As to pronunciation, you can say the nineteen hundreds or the sixteen hundreds, but many people would prefer to use the terms twentieth century and seventeenth century.

 

[emsr2d2]

I agree with Barb. For me "the 1900s" is the years 1900-1999 (also known as the twentieth century). If you only mean the first ten/eleven years of that century, you would have to say "From 1900 to 1910". Then it would be "from 1910/1911 to 1919" because we don't have a word for that decade either. Then it's the "nineteen twenties", "nineteen thirties" etc.

By the way, did you mean to put "1990's" in your title or should it have been "1900's"?