It's time for a change

[desh]

[Poll #1496312]

EDIT: OK, those of you who picked both "twenty ten" and "two thousand eleven" have some explaining to do.

Comments

without resorting to IPA

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

"twenty" "ten" -- two discrete units, rolling into each other in terms of stresses.

"twenty" "eleven" -- two discrete units, but the dual unstressed syllables with the same vowel sound (in my dialect at least) between the liminal boundaries come out sounding like a hiccup and trip your tonge; native english speakers don't often find dual unstressed syllables bookended by stressed syllables natural where the unstressed vowel sound is identical or near-identical: "TWEHN-teee eee-LEH-vuhn" is not a natural occurrance in my dialect (speakers contort things so they don't have to use them whenever possible), so it's either slur (TWEHN-tee-LEH-vun) or make it into "TWO THOU-suhnd-eee-LEH-vun".

(Note that the 'eee' in 'eleven' is slightly more midvowel than the "eee" in "twenty", but close enough, in my dialect.)

Re: without resorting to IPA

[desh]

I don't think I ever have the "eee" sound in an unstressed syllable. It's certainly a schwa for me in this case. But my main reason for "twenty eleven" is that I think we have to make the switch to "twenty" at some point, and avoiding a 6-syllable year name is a great point to choose!