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

My name is Mandy, and this is our 69th episode. Today I'm going to go into a topic I've never

talked about on these podcasts before. Numbers. Specifically, I'm going to go into a topic I've never talked about on these podcasts before.

Numbers.

Specifically, I'm going to talk about the most misinterpreted numbers in English.

These are not just the most misinterpreted by non-native speakers and ESL students, but by native speakers as well. It seems to me to just be a

poor design in English. I'm talking about teens and tens, as in 13 and 30, 14 and 40, 15 and 50, 15 and 50, 16 and 60, 17 and 60, 17 and 70, 18 and 80, and 19 and 90.

The most obvious difference between these numbers is that the teens end in an N sound and the

tens do not.

However, that N sound does not seem to be adequate in always distinguishing the numbers

in actual speech.

The dictionaries all seem to agree that the tens and teens are stressed on the first syllable,

though they generally also show that teens can be stressed on the second syllable as well.

So we can sometimes use syllable stress to tell the difference, but not always,

because which syllable of the teens is stressed can shift.

Context actually plays into the syllable stress of teens. If the teen is used before a noun,

it is more likely to be stressed on the first syllable. For example, there were 13 candles on the

cake.

In that sentence, the first syllable of 13 was stressed.

I'll say the sentence again.

There were 13 candles on the cake.

If the teen is the final word of a phrase or sentence,

...