Mike Speciner wrote:
Hypothesis: When fifteen is the last word of the phrase, it's pronounced fifTEEN; otherwise it's FIFteen.
--ms
I would think that the phrase "When fifteen is the last word of the phrase" would provide a fairly nice counterexample to that hypothesis--at least the way I would pronounce it. I'd also point out that placement cannot be the determining factor, as there are phrases in which "fifteen" could be pronounced either way, with a slight variation in the meaning of the phrase [e.g. at the beginning of a story one would probably say, "FIF-teen years ago..."; but if one had just talked about an event that had occurred twenty years ago, the pronunciation in the same phrase might become "fif-TEEN".] Of course, now that I'm thinking about it, given any particular context I find it hard to tell which version I'd use. I figure that words like that just have no inherent stress (like single syllable words), and that the stress pattern we use in speech has more to do with the stresses of the context--English speakers don't like too many stressed or unstressed syllables in a row. Of course, that can always be overridden by semantic needs, hence my confusion when I started trying out different stresses in a given context.
-----Original Message----- From: math-fun-bounces+ms=alum.mit.edu@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:math-fun-bounces+ms=alum.mit.edu@mailman.xmission.com]On Behalf Of James Propp Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 19:01 To: math-fun@mailman.xmission.com Subject: [math-fun] the terrible teens
When is 15 pronounced "FIF-teen", and when is it pronounced "fif-TEEN"?
I'm a mathematician, and my wife teaches English as a Second Language, so you'd think we'd know the answer to this one, but the tacit rules followed by American speakers seem to be a bit complicated.
When counting from one to twenty, we say "FIF-teen".
When it's quarter past the hour and we're telling someone the time in hours and minutes, we say "fif-TEEN".
When talking about a year in the 1500's, we say "FIF-teen".
When talking about a young person's age, we say "fif-TEEN".
When talking about how many dollars something costs, the two syllables get almost equal stress, but the first syllable gets slightly more.
Do you folks agree with these examples? Is there a general rule lurking here for numbers between 12 and 20?
Jim
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