Did You Say ‘14’ or ‘40’?
The simple secret in pronouncing everyday numbers
When we spell out a name, it is common to use the NATO phonetic alphabet since so many letters sound alike (in other words, sounds that are differentiated by a single discrete sound). For example, “My name is Shira. S as in Sierra, H as in Hotel, I as in India, R as in Romeo, and A as in Alpha.”
Numbers, however, can be harder to identify since we do not have a phonetic alphabet for them. Most numbers, particularly those 0 through 10, sound unique enough that this does not generally pose a problem.
What would we say anyways?
1 as in ‘someone’;
2 as in #metoo;
3 as in ‘threesome’;
4 as in ‘forever’; and
5 as in ‘high five’?
But, when we get into the teens, there is a lot of confusion to go around.
13 sounds awfully similar to 30.
14 sounds awfully similar to 40.
15 sounds awfully similar to 50.
16 sounds awfully similar to 60.
17 sounds awfully similar to 70.
18 sounds awfully similar to 80.
19 sounds awfully similar to 90.
And thankfully, the buck stops there.
To add further confusion, most native speakers of English will NOT stress the final ‘n’ sound in the word, ‘fourteen’.
For clarification, we can always inquire, “is that as in one four or as in four zero? But there is an easier way — an actual linguistic pronunciation rule which works 100% of the time to differentiate 14 from 40.
It is pretty simple and has to do with syllable stress.
So, what is syllable stress? It is when you say one syllable of a word louder or longer than the other one.
In ‘14’, we stress the second syllable, so it sounds like ‘four-TEEN’.
Even if the ’n’ isn’t audible, and it sounds like ‘four-TEE’, we can easily distinguish this number as 14.
In ‘40’, we stress the first syllable, so it sounds like “FOR-ty”.
By the way, the actual sound in American and Canadian English is ‘FOR-dee’ as we reduce the ‘t’ sound to a ‘d’ sound in unstressed syllables.
This rule works for all the teen numbers in question, from 13 to 19, as in ‘six-TEEN’ and ‘SIX-ty’.
It is a great little trick for listening to numbers and for speaking them.
I hope you found this mini-lesson useful. Let me know in the comments.
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