How to PRONOUNCE -ed ENDINGS - Basic English Pronunciation Lesson

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/

Alright, over here I have 10 words and

I'd like you to come up with the pronunciation of the -ed endings

To do this, take a moment and in each word identify the last sound.

For example in the first one, the last sound is /k/

And then think about whether you would use /Id/ /t/ or /d/

Alright if you need, pause the video here for a moment

Think about your answers and then, I will give you the answers.

Alright let's discuss the answers

In number one, the last sound is /k/ which is unvoiced, so the -ed ending is pronounced /t/

walked, walked

In number two, the last sound is /w/ which is voiced, so the -ed ending becomes /d/

So borrowed, borrowed

In number three - this is a tricky one. A lot of people get this wrong.

What's the last sound here?

Well the last sound is /dh/ because the word is breathe, breathe.

So, the last sound is /dh/ and /dh/ is voiced so it's pronounced /d/

So breathed, breathed. Did you get this one right?

If you didn't, you might have to practice this a few times before you get it.

Next, the last sound is /d/ so the -ed ending is pronounced /Id/ - added, added.

Number five - the last sound is /s/ which is unvoiced or voiceless so kissed, kissed

Number six - the last sound is /n/ which is voiced, so listened, listened

Number seven - the last sound is /t/ so melted, melted

And number eight - the last sound is /ch/ which is voiceless, so launched, launched

Number nine - the last sound is /l/ which is voiced, so traveled, traveled

In number 10, the last sound is /b/. Remember /b/ is voiced, so grabbed, grabbed

Alright, how many of those did you get right?

Let me know how many you got correct in the comments section

I hope you enjoyed this lesson and I'll see you in another lesson soon.