...for lack of a better title.
I've been reading 時をかける少女 for the last few days, and stumbled upon a method of writing year dates that I didn't know yet. It's a really simple and intuitive system, but I don't know how to correctly pronounce these dates.
For example, how would I read 二六六○年? And how about dates including 四 or 七? On or Kun reading?
Thanks!

Hey, I just finished 時をかける少女.

I think it's not that uncommon to see dates in that format, and you pronounce them just as if the thousands and hundreds were written out in full: にせんろっぴゃくろくじゅうねん.

I think 四 is usually よん in dates and 七 is usually なな、but it's not totally set in stone. If you go to this page and do a search on なな, it seems like there was actually some controversy over the correct pronunciation of 2007. (But generally opinion came down on the side of にせんななねん, it seems.)

Okay, thanks for the quick reply =)
I had just never seen it before, so I wanted to make sure that I don't learn something wrong in the first place - but it seems like I won't really have to learn anything "new" after all. Nifty.

In vertical writing, dates are almost always written like that (i.e. this year is 二〇一三年, but in horizontal writing you're more likely to see ２０１３年. The pronunciation doesn't change regardless of how it's written.

Fillanzea Wrote:I think 四 is usually よん

As the last digit in a year, I think 四 would generally be よ, as in 2004年 -> にせんよねん.

Incidentally, in news mentioned in this other thread, at 1:07 you can hear にせんじゅうしちねん for 2017年.