NO NUMERALS how to make it cleaner or more elegant

Question

letters = ["zero", "one", "two", "three", "four", "five", "six", "seven", "eight", "nine", "ten"]
sentence = input()

def transform(phrase):
for x in range(11):
if str(x) in phrase:
pos = phrase.index((str(x)))
phrase[pos] = letters[x]
return phrase

def manip(item):
new_list = transform(item.split())
return ' '.join(new_list)

print(manip(sentence))

Answer 1

I think, manip doesn't do enough to be a function of its own.

Just convert the string to a list directly in transform, then return ' '.join(phrase).

Answer 2

Thanks for the feedback!