PRONOUNCING YEARS: HUNDREDS

Hello and welcome back to the Daily Vitamin. I hope you are having a great day.

Yesterday we learned two abbreviations, well... four abbreviations, to refer to historical times: BC (or BCE) and AD (or CE). Remember BCE and CE don't have religious connotations. 

Today we will learn how to pronounce the years in English.

Pronunciation: hundreds
We have two possible pronunciations for years in the hundreds (100-999).

(1) We can pronounce the year as we would normally pronounce a number in the hundreds.
Examples:
323 BC ⇒ three hundred and twenty-three BC
100 BCE ⇒ one hundred BCE
512 AD ⇒ five hundred and twelve AD
709 CE ⇒ seven hundred and nine CE

(2) We can divide the number into two parts: we say the 'hundred' as one number and the remaining numbers as a different number.*
Examples:
323 BC ⇒ three twenty-three BC
512 AD ⇒ five twelve AD
709 CE ⇒ seven 'oh' nine CE

*Notice that we do not do this with the date 100 B.C.

Tomorrow we will continue with the topic of how to pronounce years in English, and we will finally answer the question about the years 2005 or 2010.

⇒ In order to get some writing practice in English, I encourage you to write out (in text format) a few years between 100 and 999. You can post your years to one of our social media sites (Facebook or Bluesky) and we will give you feedback about them ASAP.

All the best!