A linguistic crisis is looming, and it`s less than eight years away:
What are we going to call the next decade-the years 2000 through 2009?
The aughts? The ohs? The zeroes? The zips? How about the ones? The hundreds?
The two-thousands? Or maybe the first decade of the third millennium?
”There is no precedent in the English language to know what we`re going to do about it,” said Cynthia Barnhart, new words editor for the World Book Dictionary.
Let`s rephrase: What comes after the `90s? The U.S. Census Bureau has been dealing in decades since 1790, and it doesn`t know.
Said Census Bureau official Jim Dinwiddie: The question ”has come up now and then, but nobody knows what to call it other than `the next decade.` ”
That clearly won`t do. Rock stations that now talk about playing ”your favorite hits from the `70s, `80s and `90s” aren`t going to settle for something as stilted as ”the next decade,” especially when we`re actually in the next decade.
How about fashion writers, op-ed columnists and TV pundits pontificating 10 years from now on the decade`s latest trends? What about advertising agencies pitching their latest product?
”It`ll be a creative challenge for Madison Avenue. They`ll have to come up with something,” said Joe Pisani, chairman of the department of advertising at the University of Florida.
”I have heard some of the older people in my family refer to years in the first decade of the 1900s as `19 aught 5,` `19 aught 6.` The idea of `the aughts` might not be so bad.”
”The aughts” was the most popular suggestion from interviews with two dozen historians, lexicographers and a host of other experts in the fields of advertising, marketing, economic forecasting and modern American literature. But several said flat out that ”aughts” (or any of its permutations-oughts, naughts and noughts) would never fly.
”It`s so pretentious and exaggerated. It conjures up the image of a New Englander with a fake British accent,” said Paul Jerome Croce, American studies professor at Stetson University.
Ben Enis, marketing professor at the University of Southern California, said ”aughts” wouldn`t work because of the ”connotation of nothingness, or loss. I`d hope someone will find a positive descriptor, or at least a neutral one.”
The problem, Enis pointed out, is avoiding negativity. Where is the positive, or even the neutral, in a zero? An alternate route might be to play off the fact that the next decade will be the first in a new century and new millennium. That suggests ”the firsts,” or maybe ”the turns” as in the turn of the century/millennium.
Whatever it is, there was near unanimous consent that some term will emerge. ”We don`t know what it will be, but it will make sense when somebody finds it,” said lexicographer Cynthia Barnhart.
”It could go any way,” said Joseph Witek, an English professor at Stetson University who specializes in popular culture. ”All these words are sitting around, waiting to be used for all kinds of purposes. It seems likely there`ll be some kind of word that exists that will be put to this use.”
New York Times columnist William Safire has written on the subject, though he has thus far refused to make his own recommendation. In 1989 he asked readers of his ”On Language” column to write in their suggestions. Among them were ”the aughties” and ”the double naughties.”
Everyone interviewed for this report was confident that some term for the next decade will be decided upon, though the winning word may not settle out until 2002 or so, after the hoopla over the turn of the millennium dies down.
