Hi everyone, and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English pronunciation podcast.

My name is Mandy, and this is our 100th episode. Yes, a milestone has been reached.

I feel pretty good about making it to a hundred shows, and I have no intention of stopping.

You, my listeners, are who allow me to keep publishing these shows every week.

And today, on this special occasion, I want to give an extra special thank you to all of you.

Truly, thank you.

For today's show, I thought I'd compare the phrase 100 to the phrase 100.

I've noticed that non-native speakers usually choose 100 instead of a hundred, even when to my ears,

a hundred would sound better.

This is one of those episodes where a pronunciation lesson merges with a grammar lesson. So what is the difference?

Well, there is little difference in meaning between 100 and 100. Even the Cambridge Dictionary

of American English gives one definition of the word ah simply as one. When I looked up the word

a, I was looking for a little more detail in the definition than that. The dictionary on my

MacBook gives a definition of a that I thought best expresses why we can say either 100 or a hundred. That dictionary says the following.

Used with units of measure to mean one such unit. It gives the examples a hundred, a quarter of an hour.

Basically, that means that a and one have the same meaning before a unit of measure.

The unit of measure we're talking about today is the unit of hundred.

Yes, it is a generic unit of measure, like a mile or a kilogram or a cup.

To make it more obvious, let's switch to something easier to picture than a hundred.

Let's talk about food. Let's pretend someone is giving you a list of things to buy at the market.

The person could say the following.

I need a dozen eggs, a gallon of milk, seven pounds of cherries, and an apple.

...