Saying the date in English

It's 2025. But how do you say it?
Two thousand twenty-five?
Two thousand and twenty-five?
Twenty twenty-five?

Keep reading to find the answer and learn how to say years and dates in English.

Saying years
In the UK, most people say “twenty twenty-five” nowadays.
However, you will occasionally hear British people saying “two thousand and twenty-five”. 

American people say both “twenty twenty-five” and “two thousand twenty-five”. Notice they don’t include “and” in the second one. The first one is becoming more common and the second one less.

(By the way, this is about how we say the year, not how we write it. In writing, we always use numbers, not words.)

Before the year 2000, Brits and Americans said most years like this:
1994 = nineteen ninety-four
1766 = seventeen sixty-six

So we divide the digits into two groups of two and say the two numbers we see.

There are a few exceptions:
1903 = nineteen oh three (or much less commonly, nineteen hundred and three)
1800 = eighteen hundred

Notice how we say “oh” like the letter O, and not “zero”.

Then we entered the new millennium and things changed:
2000 = two thousand, or the year two thousand
2001 = two thousand and one - UK / two thousand one - USA
2009 = two thousand and nine - UK / two thousand nine - USA

Sometimes we say “the year two thousand” to make it clear that it’s not the number 2000.

According to various dictionaries, you can also say “twenty oh one” or “twenty oh nine”  but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that. I think this could change in the future though as language evolves.

Be sure you don’t forget the “oh” though, because “twenty-nine” is 29, not 2009!

When we reached 2010, things got a bit complicated! There are two different ways to say it:
2010 = twenty ten or two thousand and ten

Over the next few years, the first style became more common and the second style became less common. I even remember hearing a couple of people correcting themselves on the radio, like this, “In two thousand and eleven, oh, I mean twenty eleven …”

When the Olympic Games were held in London in 2012, it was referred to as “London twenty twelve”. It’s possible that this is when we started to switch from one style to the other.

I think the switch happened faster in British English than American English. Again, this could have been because the 2012 Olympics were in Britain.

Nowadays, it’s much more common to say “twenty …” than “two thousand…” Try saying “two thousand and twenty” (for example) and you’ll notice it’s longer and more effort to say than “twenty twenty”. When there are two choices, we often go for the quickest or easiest way to say something.

But it’s still more common to say “two thousand (and) …” for the years from 2000 to 2009.

So you can say “two thousand and twenty-five” if you want to but it sounds a bit strange, especially in the UK. Maybe in the future, it will be considered completely incorrect. This is my guess. As I said earlier, language is always evolving.

So to answer the question from the beginning of the post, nowadays, “twenty twenty-five” is the most common and most natural way to say 2025.  

How do we say the years from a long time ago? Here are a few examples:
1215 = twelve fifteen
1066 = ten sixty-six
1001 = ten oh one
1000 = (the year) one thousand
512 = five twelve or, less commonly, (the year) five hundred (and) twelve. (Remember to use “and” in British English, but not in American English.)
33 AD = (the year) thirty-three AD (“ay dee”)
400 BC = (the year) four hundred BC (“bee cee”) or 400 years before Christ

BC means “before Christ” and AD means “anno domini”, which is Latin for “the year of the lord”. I’ve heard people say “BC” and “before Christ”. It’s not common to say “anno domini” and I imagine a lot of people don’t even know what AD stands for!

Nowadays, some people don’t like using AD and BC because of the Christian origins of these abbreviations. A non-religious alternative is CE (Common Era) and BCE (Before the Common Era).

Writing dates
In the UK, we (usually) write dates like this:

24th May or 24 May
(Less commonly May 24th or May 24)
24th May 1970 or 24 May 1970
24/05/70 or 24/05/1970 (or without the zero - 24/5/70)

In American English, the month comes first, like this:
​
May 24th or May 24
May 24th 1970 or May 24 1970
05/24/70 or 05/24/1970 (or without the zero - 5/24/70)

Saying dates
In the UK, we say dates like this:

24th May = the twenty-fourth of May
May 24th = May the twenty-fourth
24th May 1970 = the twenty-fourth of May, nineteen-seventy

So we say “of” and “the” but we don’t write them.

In American English, they say dates like this:

May 24th = May twenty-fourth
They put the month first and omit “the”.
May 24th 1970 = May twenty-fourth, nineteen-seventy

Here are all the numbers for dates:
1st = first
2nd = second
3rd = third
4th = fourth
5th = fifth
6th = sixth
7th = seventh
8th = eighth
9th = ninth
10th = tenth
11th = eleventh
12th = twelfth
13th = thirteenth
14th = fourteenth
15th = fifteenth
16th = sixteenth
17th = seventeenth
18th = eighteenth
19th = nineteenth
20th = twentieth
21st = twenty-first
22nd = twenty-second
23rd = twenty-third
24th = twenty-fourth
25th = twenty-fifth
26th = twenty-sixth
27th = twenty-seventh
28th = twenty-eighth
29th = twenty-ninth
30th = thirtieth
31st = thirty-first

You can listen to an audio recording here.

And here are all the months:
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December

Plus listen to an audio recording here.


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