🔢 Number Pronunciation
Master counting, dates, times, and quantities. Accurate number pronunciation is essential for everyday communication.
Master All Number Formats
Numbers, dates, times, and prices are everywhere in English. Read our complete guide to English number pronunciation to master every format with confidence.
The number pairs English speakers have to disambiguate
Thirteen and thirty, fourteen and forty, and the rest of that series are the most frequently confused words in spoken English, and the confusion causes real problems with prices, times and quantities. They differ in two ways at once, and both cues are easy to miss.
| Teen | Stress | Ten | Stress | Final sound |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| thirteen | thir-TEEN | thirty | THIR-ty | /n/ against /i/ |
| fourteen | four-TEEN | forty | FOR-ty | also a vowel change |
| fifteen | fif-TEEN | fifty | FIF-ty | /n/ against /i/ |
| sixteen | six-TEEN | sixty | SIX-ty | /n/ against /i/ |
| eighteen | eigh-TEEN | eighty | EIGH-ty | /n/ against /i/ |
In American English the t of thirty and forty is a quick flap, close to a d, which removes one of the cues entirely. That is why the stress difference matters more than the consonant, and why native speakers resort to saying three-zero when a number must be unambiguous.
Stress shift in the teens
The teens change their stress depending on what follows. Said alone, the stress is on the second syllable: four-TEEN. Directly before a noun it moves forward to avoid two stresses in a row: FOUR-teen students. This is a general English pattern rather than a quirk of numbers, and applying it makes counting sequences sound markedly more natural.
Years, dates and decimals
- Years before 2000 split into two pairs: 1984 is nineteen eighty-four, 1905 is nineteen oh five.
- 2000–2009 are said in full: two thousand and nine.
- From 2010 both patterns occur: twenty twenty-four is more common in speech.
- Decimals are read digit by digit after the point: 3.14 is three point one four, never three point fourteen.
- Phone and card numbers are read digit by digit, with zero often said as oh, and repeated digits sometimes as double five.
- Fractions use ordinals: a half, a third, two thirds, three quarters, seven eighths.
Sounds hidden inside the numbers
- three begins with
/θ/, not/t/or/f/. - twelve ends in
/v/, and the preceding vowel is long because of it. - fifth, sixth, twelfth contain some of the hardest consonant clusters in English:
/fθ/,/ksθ/,/lfθ/. - eighth is
/eɪtθ/— a single t sound followed by/θ/. - hundred is commonly HUN-drid, and thousand ends in
/nd/.
A practice sequence that works
- Count 1 to 20 slowly, checking that three and thirteen begin with
/θ/. - Alternate the confusable pairs: thirteen, thirty, fourteen, forty, fifteen, fifty.
- Say the same numbers before a noun to practise stress shift: fourteen days, forty days.
- Read prices and times aloud: £13.40, 4:15, $70, 17%.
- Say your own phone number at conversational speed, then check it back on a recording.