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than one ten plus one unit. Reason Four: Eleven also has a unique place in history as being the first number to be associated with an individual (i.e., 11 is often believed by historians and laymen alike to be King Arthur’s knights) because of which it would make sense for English speakers to adopt that pronunciation; if, on the other hand, eleven were pronounced “onety-one,” this association would have been lost or at least changed sufficiently enough so that not all people who know about this historical connection are able to recognize it when they hear someone say “eleven.” Reason Five: In addition, unlike most numbers from twelve onwards — with exceptions such as sixteen and fifty — there isn’t any rhy than eleven in order to make the number they’re reading.
Reason Three: It is a transcription of an old English pronunciation from before we started using Arabic numbers, which are now what people think when you speak aloud “eleven.” In Old and Middle English, ‘evelen’ was written as ‘leaven.’ This spelling shares more phonetic similarities with modern day German (where it’s pronounced elf), French (o-neuf) or Spanish(onze).
The reason that 11 isn’t pronounced onety one has nothing to do with any innate linguistic incompetency but rather how our spoken language evolved over time. If anything this shows us that languages are inherently fluid environments where sounds change and merge over time for certain words –Numbers are a big part of our lives. We use them to count, measure time, and now we even use them for our phone numbers! But did you know that there is actually a correct way to pronounce numbers in English? In this blog post, we will discuss 11 reasons why the number eleven should be pronounced “onety one” instead of “eleven.”
Reason One: When you say “eleven” the letter L is pronounced like a W. The word for 11 in French, Spanish and German is “onze,” “once” or “elf.” This word also has an L at the end which means that it should be pronounced similarly to how we pronounce numbers in these other languages.
Reason Two: Furthermore, when you read aloud from left-to-right on paper (rather than right-to-left), doing so will cause confusion about what number eleven is supposed to represent because of its placement next to ten as well as one more digit before it — this could lead someone who doesn’t speak English very fluently to think that they need two tens plus one unit rather
