The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on January 01, 2011, 10:54:54 am ---A very interesting issue this week. I'm now reading all about the Vatican Library. It's enormous! So many ancient text, both sacred and secular.
--- End quote ---
I haven't gotten to that article yet, but I'm really looking forward to it!
Jeff Wrangler:
Well, I just found another whopper of a goof in The New Yorker that should have been caught. In the January 3 issue, I'm reading Jeffrey Toobin's article about Nicholas Marsh, the government prosecutor who committed suicide in the wake of the Ted Stevens prosecution.
Toobin writes that the family of Marsh's mother "settled in Kentucky in the seventeenth century." Well, perhaps, if the family is Native American. There were no white settlements in Kentucky until the 1770s--which, of course, is the eighteenth century.
Aloysius J. Gleek:
“Spiderward”
by Barry Blitt
Penthesilea:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on January 09, 2011, 09:56:23 pm ---Well, I just found another whopper of a goof in The New Yorker that should have been caught. In the January 3 issue, I'm reading Jeffrey Toobin's article about Nicholas Marsh, the government prosecutor who committed suicide in the wake of the Ted Stevens prosecution.
Toobin writes that the family of Marsh's mother "settled in Kentucky in the seventeenth century." Well, perhaps, if the family is Native American. There were no white settlements in Kentucky until the 1770s--which, of course, is the eighteenth century.
--- End quote ---
You know, in school I learned that the English way of counting the centuries is different from the German one:
1401 to 1500 = fifteenth century in German, but fourtheenth century in English.
The 1770s would consequently be in the seventeenth century, just like the article said.
And I remember quite some guided tours through British castles, ruins, manors in which it was referred to the centuries as I learned it as school.
Your comment about it being wrong made me curious and I googled. Found this on wikipedia:
In Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish, centuries are typically not named ordinally, but according to the hundreds part of the year, and consequently centuries start at even multiples of 100. For example, Swedish nittonhundratalet (or 1900-talet), Danish and Norwegian nittenhundredetallet (or 1900-tallet) and Finnish tuhatyhdeksänsataaluku (or 1900-luku) refer unambiguously to the years 1900–1999. The same system is used informally in English. For example, the years 1900–1999 are sometimes referred to as the nineteen hundreds (1900s). This is similar to the English decade names (1980s, meaning the years 1980–1989).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centuries
There you go. While Toobin may not be technically correct, he's also not completely wrong, he's just being informally (now we can argue if The New Yorker's standard should require the formally correct counting method ;)).
southendmd:
--- Quote from: Penthesilea on January 12, 2011, 03:05:10 am ---
You know, in school I learned that the English way of counting the centuries is different from the German one:
1401 to 1500 = fifteenth century in German, but fourtheenth century in English.
The 1770s would consequently be in the seventeenth century, just like the article said.
And I remember quite some guided tours through British castles, ruins, manors in which it was referred to the centuries as I learned it as school.
Your comment about it being wrong made me curious and I googled. Found this on wikipedia:
In Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish, centuries are typically not named ordinally, but according to the hundreds part of the year, and consequently centuries start at even multiples of 100. For example, Swedish nittonhundratalet (or 1900-talet), Danish and Norwegian nittenhundredetallet (or 1900-tallet) and Finnish tuhatyhdeksänsataaluku (or 1900-luku) refer unambiguously to the years 1900–1999. The same system is used informally in English. For example, the years 1900–1999 are sometimes referred to as the nineteen hundreds (1900s). This is similar to the English decade names (1980s, meaning the years 1980–1989).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centuries
There you go. While Toobin may not be technically correct, he's also not completely wrong, he's just being informally (now we can argue if The New Yorker's standard should require the formally correct counting method ;)).
--- End quote ---
I sense some confusion.
While it's true that in English, we refer to 1900-1999 as the "nineteen hundreds", we also refer to it as the "twentieth century".
So, something occurring in the 1770s can be said to be in the "seventeen hundreds" (informally), but it is the "eighteenth century" (ordinally).
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