Thought I'd bagged one, but no: Henry V, Act I, scene I: CANTERBURY: Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights, Six thousand and two hundred good esquires; On 4/17/07, Thane Plambeck <tplambeck@gmail.com> wrote:
Confirming the Speciner hypothesis, but there's got to be some iambic pentameter with the fifteen carrying the opposite stress I'd think:
http://members.tripod.com/~charleswolff/ROTS/r1.html
[ Turco86 ] describes an interesting variation on the sonnet, which he calls the Blues Sonnet. He describes the blues sonnet as "a triplet stanza derived from the Black jazz tradition of lamentation or complaint, rhyming Aaa. Usually written in loose iambic pentameter measures, the second line [is] an incremental repetition of the first line, and the third line is a synthetic parallel giving a consequence of the first two lines." An example, in strict iambic pentameter:
The train she rides is fifteen coaches long. The train she rides is fifteen coaches long. The girl I love is on that train and gone.
On 4/17/07, Mike Speciner <ms@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
Hypothesis: When fifteen is the last word of the phrase, it's pronounced fifTEEN; otherwise it's FIFteen.
--ms
-----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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-- Thane Plambeck tplambeck@gmail.com http://www.plambeck.org/ehome.htm
-- Thane Plambeck tplambeck@gmail.com http://www.plambeck.org/ehome.htm