I grew up in the 90s and I remember being able to truncate the year down to just 2 numbers when talking about years within the current millennium. It seems like we’re still saying twenty before every year and I’m just wondering when that will change.
Most English-spealking people outside the US said ‘aught’ instead of ‘oh’, but definitely about 2005 the ‘two thousand and’ syntax evaporated.
In UK I’ve mostly have heard ‘naughties’ for the decade sine about 1999. But I rarely heard “naughty X” as a year name unless someone was being even more deliberately daft. I’d say “oh” would be most common here after “two thousand and X” too in my experience.
I always thought that “'aught” was an American contraction of ‘naught’.
“aught” in old timey-English can mean “other” or “else” or even “anything”. In my local dialect we still say “owt” meaning “anything” as an opposite of “nowt” nothing".
Our quirky university president tried very hard to make “aughty-aught” happen for 2000. It did not catch on.
I think Australian’s usually say “oh”. Signed an Aussie that’s spent enough time abroad to confuse himself on what they actually say
Nah at definitely say oh one.
Never heard anyone say aught one or aught 2, just sounds dumb