Talk:thirty

Greek

Trianda vs. Triakonta

Currently, it lists "trianda" for thirty. Triakonta is thirty. It means "three knots". Knots were used for counting. Anda means egg or testicle, or breath or spirit. I'll put both down, but I think triakonta (or triaconta) is preferred. Erudecorp 04:41, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Both are used in Modern Greek, but τριάντα is the more common of the two. I don’t believe τριάντα has anything to do with testicles, but is merely a contraction of τριάκοντα, possibly influenced by Italian trenta from Latin triginta (which means "three tens"). Cf. σαράντα, πενήντα, εξήντα, εβδομήντα. See the etymology at el:πενήντα. —Stephen 08:47, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

WTF?

Who's idea was it to list the numeral 30 in all the scripts possible? Mglovesfun (talk) 09:26, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Pronunciation - first vowel

Is the pronunciation supposed to be transcribed as /ˈθɜːti/? It doesn't sound like an /ɜ/ to me. Is there a more specific transcription of this sound?

That is the British RP. It rhymes with dirty. Perhaps you are confusing /ɜ/ with /ɛ/? —Stephen ^(Talk) 16:12, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Indeed I confused them! I don't think I've seen "ɜ" actually used before. It seems like a rare sound. — Knyȝt (talk) 01:41, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

It is not found in American English, but it’s extremely common in British English. —Stephen ^(Talk) 14:36, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Pronunciation - final consonant

The following discussion has been moved from the page Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2013/September#.5B.C9.BE.5D_or_.5Bd.5D_in_thirty.3F.21.

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[ɾ] or [d] in thirty?!

Ad https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=thirty&diff=23244022&oldid=23231423 - discussion about [ɾ] or [d] in thirty. I must say that the [ɾ] is really confusing for an average reader (and even for such like me, who at the college attended among others phonetics as well), because at least the listening impression of the sound is really /d/ (I am a native speaker od Czech, not of English, and I bet for a German native speaker it will be the same). I beg for a system solution of this - at least to add a note of this at every relevant place (in a system way), or better to add a pronunciation with /d/ in such cases. For example http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/thirty chooses another solution, which is actually not much better - writes [t] and [t̬ ] (an average reader (and even me ;) ) - doesn't know such a sign - it seems it might be a variant of /t/ or a mistake, maybe). However, [ɾ] indicates a pronunciation of an r-sound, what is definetely misleading (at least for me)... Thanks, --Jiří Janíček (talk) 23:25, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

As a native speaker of US English who uses flaps in words like butter, I agree that this seems like a /d/. That's how it seems when I produce it and when I listen to it. --BB12 (talk) 23:45, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

As a native US speaker, I have used all of the pronunciations given, the hard "t" pronunciation for emphasis or when the number is a focal point of the conversation, the "d" pronunciation most commonly (I think), and the minimal-consonant pronunciation when tired or rushed. The last comes naturally and doesn't really need dictionary documentation, but folks like to record that kind of thing anyway, even if it is misleading or confusing. DCDuring TALK 23:48, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

I certainly use [ɾ] (i.e., the same consonant that most Americans, including myself, use in butter), and I suspect that BB12 and DCDuring do as well. It don't think it really makes sense to say that it's /d/; the reason it sounds the same as /d/ (in the mouths of some speakers) is that the distinction between /t/ and /d/ is neutralized in this context (for those speakers), so /d/ is no better than /t/, and the latter has the advantage of history, analogy, and spelling. It's presumably true that when someone who doesn't neutralize the distinction hears the pronunciation of someone who does neutralize it, it'll sound like /d/ to them (due to the voicing); but that's a terrible basis for a transcription. (We could toss out half the vowels if we only care about what something sounds like to people with a different accent.) That said, if we want to capture the neutralization in an otherwise phonemic transcription, I think we could write /D/ (using uppercase because it's an "archiphoneme" subsuming /t/ and /d/ in this context). —Ruakh_TALK 01:40, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

It probably varies both geographically and over time. Probably also be level of education and social context. bd2412 T 02:45, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

The phoneme, broadly transcribed, is definitely /t/ and not /d/; Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com, Macmillan (US/UK) and the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary all agree on that. The phoneme is realised as [ɾ] (narrowly transcribed) in this context in American and Australian English because those dialects exhibit "intervocalic alveolar flapping". That, as Ruakh notes, means they reduce /t/ and /d/ to [ɾ] in several circumstances: for example, petal and peddle fall together as [ˈpɛɾl̩] (which is, incidentally, also how some Scots pronounce pearl). - -sche (discuss) 06:03, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

I looked around, and specialists seem to agree that this sound in "thirty" is a flap, but to me, the flap in "butter" seems different from the sound in "thirty." Without further proof, I have to agree with the specialists :) --BB12 (talk) 09:51, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Maybe the r in thirty has the effect of turning the flap into a slightly more retroflex-like sound? —CodeCat 17:50, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

• In , I hear something like "/ˈθɜɹdi/", but I am a Czech native speaker. By constrast, the British produces a clear "t" for me. I also hear "d" in the U.S. pronunciation of "pretty", as if "pridi": . It's great that Wiktionary users can peruse sound recordings rather than having to rely on their IPA transcriptions. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:27, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

I found a reference saying it's [d] at w:Intervocalic_alveolar-flapping: "Flapping/tapping does not occur for most speakers in words like carpenter and ninety, which instead surface with [d]." This is a Wikipedia page with a link to a sound file, so it is not written proof. --BB12 (talk) 21:27, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

But the relevant phoneme in thirty is not preceded by an /n/. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 21:37, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Good point; that makes it inconclusive. I have r-ful pronunciation, so the /r/ in "thirty" has a full consonant value for me and it seems to me fairly clear that I pronounce this more as a /d/ than a flap. That is original research, though :) --BB12 (talk) 23:09, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

If a question about pronunciation of a common English word takes this much discussion, then the outcome might belong in square brackets.

Wouldn’t most readers benefit from a broad, phonemic pronunciation like /ˌθərti/, utilizing a simple set of IPA and not labelled with any accent? Every English speaker knows how they pronounce /t/ in that place of the word. —Michael Z. 2013-09-26 14:39 z

As someone who has been a native US English speaker for over 30 years and has lived on both sides of the country, I can tell you with relative certainty that /θɜɹdi/ ('thurdee') is the normal pronunciation of the word in the US. Kaldari (talk) 09:27, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Here's a Youtube video specifically about how to pronounce the word "thirty": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jVjujBjcdY. In the video, the teacher (who sounds very American) explicitly says that the 't' should be pronounced as a 'd'. Kaldari (talk) 09:37, 5 November 2013 (UTC)