ladyofastolat | Twenty twelve

For several years, I've been wondering when the standard way of saying dates out loud would switch from "two thousand and..." to "twenty..." After all, we say "Ten Sixty Six," not "One thousand and sixty six." I'd half expected the change to happen in 2010, since "Twenty ten" is nice and easy to say, whereas in the previous years, you had the slight awkwardness of having to add an "O" to dates you started with "twenty." ("Twenty O Nine," not "Twenty nine.") However, although I heard quite a few twenty tens and twenty elevens, I heard a whole lot more two thousand and tens and two thousand and elevens, despite the additional two syallables.

However, for the last however many years, we in Britain have been bombarded with talk of the Twenty Twelve Olympics, so I have confidentally expected that the start of 2012 would be the tipping point, after which almost everyone (in Britain, at least) started using "twenty..." consistently. However, amongst people at work, I'm still hearing "two thousand and twelve" pretty much universally.

I wonder if the decade after 2000 is the only one that isn't consistently referred to using the "Three eighty-five," "Nine seventeen," "Fifteen oh eight" sort of pattern. If so, I wonder why. Is it because "the year two thousand" has been spoken about for years in the context of imagining the future, or is it all Arthur C Clarke's fault?