Looking Ahead, Our Vision is '20-20' by Rob Kyff on Creators.com

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Looking Ahead, Our Vision is '20-20'

Should we pronounce the current year as "two thousand ten" or "twenty ten"?

For the past 10 years, most language authorities have quietly tolerated "two thousand one," "two thousand two," etc.

Not anymore. Citing brevity ("two thousand ten" has four syllables; "twenty ten" has three) and precedent (our great-grandparents said "nineteen ten"), they insist that we take the training wheels off the 21st century and say "twenty ten."

But Gene Martin of Hannawa Falls, N.Y., writes me to dissent. He makes a persuasive case for "two thousand ten," noting that, when we count 2,009 and 2,010 as numbers, we say, "two thousand nine, two thousand ten," not "twenty oh nine, twenty ten." So why, he asks, should we say "twenty ten" for the year 2010?

Alas, Mr. Martin, stout-hearted though he be, is swimming upstream against a raging torrent of usage authorities who command, "Give me some men who say 'twenty ten'!"

Let's consider two other questions of contemporary usage:

— Textbook Case: What's the past tense of the verb "text"? Is it "text" or "texted"? And if it's "texted," is "texted" pronounced "tex'd" (one syllable) or "tex-tid" (two syllables)?

Some verbs do retain their basic form in the past tense — "thrust," "quit," "hit" and "bid" come to mind — but "text" isn't one of them.

Like most verbs, it simply adds "-ed" to form the past tense.

You might assume that "text" is a new verb coined during the current text-messaging phase. In fact, the verb "text" dates to the 1500s, when it had the now-obsolete meanings "to write in a text-hand" and "to cite texts."

For the past 500 years, writers and speakers have treated "text" as a regular verb with the past tense "texted," pronounced "text-tid." We should do the same.

— "Stem" Cell Breakthrough: I witnessed the birth of a new transitive verb the other day when a faculty colleague said, "I hope today's workshop will stem the conversation about teaching methods."

She clearly meant, not that it would stem (halt) the conversation, but that it would foster it. While "stem" is widely used as an intransitive verb to mean "grow from" ("The conversation stemmed from the workshop"), its use as a transitive verb has, until now, been limited to the "halt" meaning, as in "stem the tide."

So, should we stem (spread) this new usage — or should we stem (stop) it? Hmmmm …

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045. To find out more about Rob Kyff and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.