How to PRONOUNCE -ed ENDINGS - Basic English Pronunciation Lesson

In this lesson, you will learn how to correctly pronounce the -ed endings in verbs. Also see - MOST COMMON MISTAKES IN ENGLISH & HOW TO AVOID THEM:    • 50 MOST COMMON MISTAKES in English Grammar...  

Transcript:

Hello and welcome! My name is Ganesh, I'm from LearnEnglishLab.com and
In this lesson I'm going to teach you how to pronounce -ed endings correctly.
Now we commonly find these in the past tense forms of verbs. Of course we do find them in
some adjectives as well but mostly these are found in the past simple and the
past participle forms of regular verbs.

Alright, now when you have a verb with with an -ed ending, it can be pronounced
in one of three ways - either as /Id/, /t/ or /d/ as in started - here the sound is
started - /Id/ It's not startID but it's a little softer - started. In this word its
jumped, jumped - /t/ Or cared, cared - /d/ Now, which way you should pronounce the
-ed ending will depend on the last sound in the word and we will get into the
rules in a moment, but these are the three ways that you can pronounce the -ed ending.

Alright let's now look at the rules.Let's do the easy one first
If the last sound in a word is /t/ or /d/ then the -ed ending is pronounced /Id/
like for example - waited, waited; tasted, tasted
In both of these words, the last sound before the -ed ending is /t/ so we use /Id/
Similarly, in these two words the last sound is /d/ so landed, landed or decided, decided
So if the last sound is /t/ or /d/ then the -ed ending is pronounced /Id/

Before we move on to the next two rules, there's an important concept that you need
to understand. And that is the concept of voice. No, I'm not talking about our voice
when we speak. In English we say that some sounds have voice and some sounds
don't have voice.

If a sound has voice, we call it a 'voiced' sound and if it doesn't have voice,
we call it a 'voiceless' sound. But what does 'voice' mean? To understand what it
means, I'd like you to take two fingers - your index and your middle finger and
I'd like you to put them on your throat like so. Now say /b/, /b/
When you say /b/ you should be feeling a slight vibration in your fingers coming
from your throat. That vibration is called voice.

So we can say that the sound /b/ is a voiced sound. That is, it has voice. So what
about voiceless sounds? Well once again, put your fingers on your throat. And this
time you're going to say that the sound /s/ but you're going to say it continuously - /s/
If you said it did you feel a vibration in your throat? Well if you said it correctly,
you would have felt no vibration. That's why we say that the sound /s/ is voiceless -
or it has no voice. Similarly - /sh/ Like you're telling someone to be quiet - /sh/
Again, no voice.

If the last sound in a word is voiceless then the -ed ending is pronounced /t/
For example - touched, touched. This sound /ch/ is voiceless, so touched - /t/
pushed, pushed - here the last sound is /sh/ so pushed
laughed, laughed - notice here that the last two letters are 'gh' but the sound
is /f/ - so laughed.

Now before we move on I want to ask you a question - why do we do this?
If the last sound is unvoiced or voiceless, why do we say /t/ for the -ed ending?
Well it's simply because the /t/ sound is also a voiceless sound. So it makes it
easier for us to say the -ed ending.

Alright so in the second row - liked, liked; dressed, dressed; clapped, clapped.
So when the last sound is voiceless, we say /t/ the -ed ending.

And when the last sound is voiced, the -ed ending is pronounced /d/
These are all some examples of voiced sounds - /g/ /j/ /b/ /v/ /z/ etc
And there are actually more voice sounds in English - these are just some examples
And any vowel sound is automatically voiced. Like if you say 'o' or 'a' or 'e' you
cannot say it without voicing it. So any vowel sound will always have voice.

OK, let's look at some examples again. Hugged - in the word hug, the last
sound is /g/ so hugged, hugged; played, played; encouraged - here the last sound is
/j/ which is voiced, so encouraged. Boiled.

What about this word? How would you pronounce it? Well the fact that I've put it in the
voiced category should give you a clue. Because when we say the word, use as a verb,
its use, use. This 's' becomes /z/ - so use. The past tense form is used, used.
loved, loved

Alright so now you know the three ways that we pronounce the - ed endings. Before we
finish this lesson, in a moment, I'm going to give you a test to see if you can
pronounce -ed endings correctly. Before doing that, let's quickly recap what we've
learned today. If the last sound in a word is /t/ or /d/ then the -ed ending is
pronounced /Id/ If the last sound is voiceless, then we say /t/ for the -ed ending.
And if the last sound is voiced, the -ed ending is pronounced /d/