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
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 _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
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
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
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
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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
I would say, it's "three fif-TEEN" but "It's fif-teen minutes past four", with approximately equal emphasis on both syllables. For arithmetic, I would tend to say "SIX-teen minus one is FIF-teen". For ages, "She's fif-TEEN", but "Her age is fif-TEen" (with only slightly more emphasis on the last syllable), and "She's FIF-teen years old". Interesting question. Bill -----Original Message----- From: math-fun-bounces+cordwell=sandia.gov@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:math-fun-bounces+cordwell=sandia.gov@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of Mike Speciner Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 9:33 PM To: 'math-fun' Subject: RE: [math-fun] the terrible teens 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 _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
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
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
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Quoting James Propp <propp@math.wisc.edu>:
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.
I, who speak (American) English as a first language, say fif - teen. In primary school, we were mercilessly slapped down for "singing" or squealling or squeaking. Some unfortunates, who have already learned to speak, get hit by the reverse problem when coming into their second language. I hope nobody denounces this thread as "neither math nor fun." Fifteen is, after all, a number and thus part of "mathematics," and should be treated with respect, including good pronumciation or its name. - hvm ------------------------------------------------- www.correo.unam.mx UNAMonos Comunicándonos
participants (6)
-
Cordwell, William R -
Emma Cohen -
James Propp -
mcintosh＠servidor.unam.mx -
Mike Speciner -
Thane Plambeck