词汇大师--Now We're Past the, Uh, First Decade

　　AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: We're back with Ben Zimmer from the American Dialect¹ Society.
RS: We talked last week about the society's choice for 2009's Word of the Year -- the Twitter-inspired "Tweet" -- and Word of the Decade, "Google." But talking about decades is a whole other story. We'll share some listener comments later in the program.
AA: Decades are easy to name once you reach the twenties. Then come the thirties, the forties and so on. But what about the first two decades of a new century? As Ben Zimmer says, there's no consensus².

　　BEN ZIMMER: "Well, you can just speak very generally, you could speak about it as 'the first decade of the twenty-first century,' but that doesn't really lend itself to the types of ways of talking about decades that we normally³ have with the seventies, eighties, nineties. The first decade? That's ... "
RS: "What did we call it when we had the turn to the twentieth century, what did we call it then, in nineteen hundred to nineteen ten?"
AA: "Or eighteen hundred to eighteen ten or seventeen hundred to seventeen ten?"
BEN ZIMMER: "Well, the whole idea of even talking about decades in this way really only started in the late nineteenth century. We have examples of people talking about the 'eighties' and the 'nineties,' referring to the eighteen eighties or the eighteen nineties, for instance⁴. But they had a similar problem in the first decade of the twentieth century, of not being exactly sure what to call it.
"Very often it was just simply called 'the nineteen hundreds,' although of course that's a bit ambiguous⁵ because it could refer to the whole century. But there wasn't really a good term for it back then either. Some people in retrospect⁶ have called the decade 'the aughts.'"
AA: "A-U-G-H-T."
BEN ZIMMER: "Right, because you could refer to the name of a year like nineteen-oh-seven as 'aught-seven' but that wasn't really popular at the time. And we saw it coming up again with the first decade of the twenty-first century, where 'aughts,' at least in the United States, seemed to be one of the more popular names for the decade.
"But it always kind of seemed to have a self-conscious or retro type of sound to it if people talked about 'the aughts.' It sounded almost purposefully old-fashioned⁷ to say 'Oh, yes, here we are in the mid-aughts or the late-aughts.' So even though in the U.S. at least that was something that some people were using, there was no really consensus term."
AA: "What about now the second decade? What are you predicting or what are you seeing people call it?"
BEN ZIMMER: "Well, the obvious choices there would be either 'the tens' or 'the teens,' and I think that the teens would be more popular, although technically⁸ speaking we might not want to refer to the teens starting until two thousand thirteen -- or twenty thirteen, I'm sorry I should say, since twenty is the way that we'll be starting the names of years starting now in twenty ten. So the years twenty ten, twenty eleven, twenty twelve, maybe those are the preteens. But I think that generally people will use the teens as the decade goes on to refer to that whole decade from twenty ten to twenty nineteen."
RS: Ben Zimmer is executive⁹ producer of visualthesaurus.com. Some of you who have been listening to us for a long time may remember that we addressed this issue of decade names back in nineteen ninety-nine. We even had a "Name the Next Decade" contest.
AA: We had entries from forty-five countries and, not surprisingly, no clear winner. The single most popular theme was "first decade." But the suggestions ranged from "the zeros" to "the o's," the "double nothings" to "the zilches," the "oh-zone" to the "oh-somethings." We also had suggestions for "cyber decade," "digy ten" (as in "digital technology") and "ten.com."
RS: A listener from Nigeria, Chiaka Celestine, suggested calling it the 'decade of great achievement and fulfillment.' "I name it so," she said "because in most countries especially the developing ones, the next decade is seen as the target period for the achievement and fulfillment of lots of things. Take for instance," she added, "the talk of health for all by the year 2000, food for all by the year 2000, Vision¹⁰ 2010 in Nigeria."
AA: Those were suggestions we got at the turn of the century. We'd welcome more comments on what to call twenty ten to twenty nineteen? Are you happy with the tens or the teens, or do you have a better idea?
RS: Go to our Web site at voanews.com/wordmaster to post your ideas and we'll read them on the air. For now, that's WORDMASTER for this week. With Avi Arditti, I'm Rosanne Skirble.

1 dialect   

n.方言，土语，地方话

参考例句：

• He wrote a play in a local dialect.他用当地方言写了一个剧本。
• They began to speak rapidly in dialect.他们开始叽里呱啦地说起地方话来。

2 consensus   

n.(意见等的)一致，一致同意，共识

参考例句：

• Can we reach a consensus on this issue?我们能在这个问题上取得一致意见吗？
• What is the consensus of opinion at the afternoon meeting?下午会议上一致的意见是什么？

3 normally   

adv.正常地，通常地

参考例句：

• I normally do all my shopping on Saturdays.我通常在星期六买东西。
• My pulse beats normally.我脉搏正常。

4 instance   

n.例，例证，实例

参考例句：

• Can you quote me a recent instance?你能给我举一个最近的例子吗？
• He's a greedy boy,yesterday,for instance,he ate all our biscuits!他是个贪吃的孩子――比如，他昨天把我们的饼干都吃了！

5 ambiguous   

adj.引起歧义的，模棱两可的，含糊不清的

参考例句：

• This sentence is ambiguous in sense.这个句子意思不清楚。
• The title of this chapter is ambiguous.这一章的标题含义模糊。

6 retrospect   

n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯

参考例句：

• One's school life seems happier in retrospect than in reality.学校生活回忆起来显得比实际上要快乐。
• In retrospect,it's easy to see why we were wrong.回顾过去就很容易明白我们的错处了。

7 old-fashioned   

adj.旧式的，保守的，挑剔的

参考例句：

• Why do you still dress in an old-fashioned mode?你为什么还穿款式陈旧的衣服？
• Here is an old-fashioned pump for drawing water from a well.这里有一个旧式水泵可从井里抽水。

8 technically   

adv.专门地，技术上地

参考例句：

• Technically it is the most advanced equipment ever.从技术上说，这是最先进的设备。
• The tomato is technically a fruit,although it is eaten as a vegetable.严格地说，西红柿是一种水果，尽管它是当作蔬菜吃的。

9 executive   

adj.执行的，行政的；n.执行者，行政官，经理

参考例句：

• A good executive usually gets on well with people.一个好的高级管理人员通常与人们相处得很好。
• He is a man of great executive ability.他是个具有极高管理能力的人。

10 vision   

n.视觉，先见之明，光景，视力，眼力，幻想，影像；vt.幻想

参考例句：

• The wall cuts across our line of vision.那面墙挡住了我们的视线。
• Much reading has impaired his vision.大量读书损害了他的视力。