Korean Job Discussion Forums

[MattAwesome]

I am American. I have always pronounced thirty like "thirdy." I think we do this to distinguish between thirty and thirteen. which i enunciate that "t."

Do british speakers enunciate that "t" in thirty? I have corrected everyone in the past, but as i have become aware of british pronunciation, i am more hesitant to do so.

I wish there was some consistency...

[carpetdope]

Differentiating between thirteen and thirty is more about stressing either the first or second syllable (ie: thir-TEEN vs THIR-ty).

[randall020105]

Hi.

you can explain to them that you have different pronunciations depending on where you are on the Globe. for Ex. in America they say it one way and another in the UK. thus there is no right or wrong way, just a difference in pronunciation. the same goes for many other words as well like twenty.
the choice is theirs.
personally i prefer the "twenty" or the "thirty" sound as apposed to twenny or thirdy as is the case with many other variations.
the only time i get agitated is when someone says stuff like "the right way of saying something" is the American way when that's clearly not true.
i always try to educate them both ways so the choice is up to them.

R.

p.s.: carpetdope +1

[chellovek]

I say thirty. Like the fellow above says, just teach people that there are different accents and ways of pronouncing words. It doesn't need to be a big deal.

In one class last week a co-teacher (American accent) asked a class if they could tell the difference between her pronunciation and mine and they said no. I think I've heard it elsewhere on here before, but apparently alot of people can't really tell the difference anyway.

[thegadfly]

carpetdope +1

The stress on the first or second syllable has been the best way I have found to clarify -- regardless of other pronunciation things (whether "tee" or "dee").

Naturally, when we pronounce a word and are misunderstood, we repeat with greater stress on the part of the word causing confusion -- the -teen or -ty. Normally, that works, but in this specific case, it causes greater confusion...so we practice THIR-dee, thir-TEEN, FOUR-dee, four-TEEN, and the problem pretty much disappears....

[AsiaESLbound]

Noticed it's common for Koreans to say, "thirty," when they mean, "thirteen," or, "fourty," instead of the, "fourteen," intended. Koreans trying to speak English selling you things from bus tickets to taxi rides often do this. It was funny, when I first arrived, the airport bus ticket lady said, "fourty tousand," and I was like, "That's so expensive." When I had my 2nd man won out, she took the 2 man won and gave me 6,000 back. Then I realized that teens often sound like hugely inflated numbers of somewhat similiar sound. Dam, if the Koreans were really ganking around for tourist money, this would be a classic trick.

[Darkeru]

If you ever want to check the British pronunciation, you can use the Cambridge online dictionary.

Click on the audio link for UK pronunciation soundbite, there's sometimes the US one to compare it to also.

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/thirty

In this case yes, the British do pronounce the /t/ noticeably.

[fergalreid]

Don't get me started on English received pronunciation. It was not a source of joy for me on TEFL course to find out that "aihhplane" was the technically correct pronunciation of airplane. Irish like their Rs With regards to this questions about Thirty vs Thirdy, it's clearly the former. There's a T at the end. Why would it not be pronounced as a T?

[ontheway]

[MattAwesome]

ok thanks for the clarification. and the link. im not going to teach different pronunciations, bu glad to be aware of the differences.

ps. we're out of buddah :p

[Pikkle]

[GreenlightmeansGO]

I teach my students to use the /d/ sound for 20/30 etc just to make communication easier. Quick and efficient.

Why did someone mention the 'correct' way to pronounce 'airplane/aeroplane'? There are several ways to say it, depending on nationality/region.

[ontheway]

[tfunk]

I'm Irish. It's "turt tee" proceeded by a slight pause for the sniggering to die down.

[edwardcatflap]

Ha Ha nice one. Is he a midget or a dwarf?

Actually the way you would pronounce 'thirty' (In British English pronunciation) is also dependent on whether you are saying it as an isolated word or as part of connected speech. Numbers, which come up at elementary level, are usually taught in drills as isolated words. However, later with advanced students you might want to make them aware of the glottal stop in rapid colloquial speech so they can identify a number in a sentence spoken at normal speed. Whether you want to make the glottal stop a target for speaking is up to you but most books recommend RP as a speaking target in which case the 't' would be pronounced in sentences as well.