Hi, students.
Hope you're well.
In this session, I'm going to teach you
the pronunciation of the most difficult number in all its--
most of its form, and this is the number three.
The reason why I think it is the most difficult number
to pronounce is because students often substitute the "th"
sound with other consonants.
So the best one I ever heard came out
sounding like "dirty tree," a tree as in growing in the park,
having leaves, and dirty as in not being clean.
The number 33 sounded like "dirty tree."
And I found that quite amusing.
So in this lesson, you're going to learn
the correct pronunciation of "three"
and all of its associated forms.
So we need to start off with a quick demonstration of how
to make this sound here, which is th, th, th.
And it's one of the "th" sounds, th.
It's a voiceless sound, so it makes an air sound-- th, th,
th, th.
And the way you do is you place your tongue lightly
on the back of your front teeth.
And you need a slight gap with your lower teeth--
th, th, th.
And as your tongue rests lightly in that gap touching the teeth,
you release and blow.
So it should sound like th, th, th, th.
The difficult thing about this sound
is it takes time to develop muscle holding
your tongue in that place.
So it can feel-- and its a bit strange at first.
And this sound is difficult because it doesn't
exist in that many of the world's languages,
so everyone who learns English is in a similar situation
if you find it difficult.
So let's go through these numbers now.
Three, three, three.
Notice that I have a "er" sound there-- thr, thr, thr, three.
Now, this number is even more difficult.
And let's look at the IPA.
We have a different first syllable.
This time it's "thur," thur, thur.
Second syllable, "teen"--
13, 13.
This one is 30, 30.
Now we have 33, 33.
Difficult again because we have "th" here and "th" there.
I shall underline.
So your tongue has to be very dexterous to get the T
sounds in there.
Now we have 300, 300, 3,000, 3,000.
This is actually a "zuh" sound.
We've got two-- two of them here as well, 30,000,
and a big number here, 300,000.
So let's have a closer look at the pronunciation
of other numerical words that we might
use with "three" sometimes.
We've got "million."
A lot of students will say "million" with three syllables.
However, most native speakers you meet
are going to say just two syllables-- million, million.
The second syllable is going to sound like "yen," yen, yen.
This sound here is called a "yod."
And we have a billion, billion, the same pattern happening
in that word.
These are both big numbers.
You can have 3 million or 3 billion, 3 billion people.
And then we've got "hundred" as in 300--
hun, hun, hundred and thousand, thousand, 3,000.
If you're in a race, a running race, and you come third,
that tells us your position.
There were two people before you.
You were third, third.
So we've got the word "third," third, third.
It has one of these "th" sounds.
How can you remember the pronunciation?
Perhaps it will help you to know that it
rhymes with "word" and "bird"--
third, word, bird.
Now we have 13th, 13th.
Let's look at the interpretive spelling.
First part is "thur," thur, thur,
like how the beginning of "Thursday" sounds, same sound--
thur, 13th 13th.
OK, so a note about why I'm spelling it U-R.
Reason is because when students see this spelling,
they say "theer," "theer-teenth," "theer-teenth."
They give it a different vowel, so this interpretive spelling
here may help you pronounce it closer
to the vowel the word actually contains.
And other words that keep this pattern are--
if you look at the spellings here, U-R, U-R, U-R,
it's like "thur"--
turn, burn, surf, 13th, 13th.
OK, our next word.
[CHIMING]
This one is a very weird spelling.
It's easier if we separate it into three parts.
Stress on the first--
thur, tee, ith, 30th.
T, long vowel-- here's a schwa, "ith," ith, ith.
So this word also has two "th" sounds and that one.
My 30th birthday.
And what else have we got here?
33rd-- he came 33rd in the race.
This time, the stress is on the end.
Well, there's two stresses.
This one's a bit less--
33rd, 33rd.
[CHIMING]
I'll meet you at 3:00 PM.
How we say this--
actually, I should write this in the grammatically correct way.
It does actually have dots here.
We just say the letters P and M. That's how you pronounce it.
I'll see you at 3:00 PM.
I'll see you at 3:30.
OK, now we're going to look at words
to do with the number three.
So this is going to expand your general vocabulary,
and it's a bet you might learn some new words here.
"Triple," triple is an adjective before a noun.
So you can have a triple serving.
That would mean you'd have three times the amount of food.
If you really like ice cream, you
could have a triple serving of ice cream.
We've got "treble," which is a determinant before a noun.
This is times something by three.
So something can be treble the cost.
That would mean it costs three times as much.
Traveling first class in the train costs treble the amount.
[CHIMING]
"Trinity," this is three parts making one whole,
and it's normally used in the Christian sense of the Holy
Trinity--
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
[CHIMING]
Then we have "tricycle," which is
a bicycle with how many wheels?
Yes, you've got it.
[CHIMING]
Then I would rather not define this word.
But let's say it has two meanings.
There's one acceptable meaning, which
means a group of three people.
You can have a twosome, which is two people together.
And you can have a "this word," which is three people together.
And there's also a vulgar meaning
which I don't want explain.
[CHIMING]
You can have a trio of people.
This is again three people together.
You can have a trio of musicians.
This one's very, very polite.
We haven't got any problem saying "trio."
[CHIMING]
And then "triangle," why not?
Just for good measure-- you can't talk about threes
without mentioning a triangle.
In a moment, I've got some repeat-after-me sentences
that contain the vocabulary in this lesson.
But first of all, could you give this video a Like?
I really appreciate it because you're
helping my channel to grow.
The event is on the 3rd of April.
I'm not available on Friday the 13th.
I'll see you at 3:30.
We break for lunch at 1300 hours.
The car is worth 3,000 pounds.
I only ate one third of the pizza.
I'm in my 30s.
I'll have three free coffees, please.
I just wanted to say thank you for finishing this lesson.
I hope you enjoyed it.
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Thank you for watching, and come back again soon.
I'll see you then.
Bye.