Pronunciation of Past Tense Regular Verbs in English - "ed" Sounds (AJ #14)

Hello. This is Jack from ToFluency.com and this is Ask Jack, the series where I answer your questions

about learning English and the English language and in today’s episode, we’re going to

talk about pronunciation and this question comes from a To Fluency program member. So,

take it away, Javier. Javier from Columbia asks, "How do you pronounce regular verbs

in the past tense?"

Thank you for this question, Javier. So, what we’re talking about here is the pronunciation

for the past tense regular verbs. Okay, those verbs that end in "ed" and there are 3 ways

that you can pronounce these verbs and the way you pronounce them depends on the sound

of the verb. So, let’s have a look at the first way.

We’ll start with the /ID/ sound. Now, when we use this sound we add an extra syllable.

Here is an example, add becomes added. Add becomes added. And, we use this sound when

the verb ends in a ‘d’ or a ‘t’. So, it’s quite a simple one to remember. When

the verb ends in a ‘d’ or a ‘t’, we use this sound. He started learning English

last year. So, start becomes started. We decided to go to Barcelona. See the picture on your

screen, this is a photo I took in Barcelona. And, last year, my wife and I decided to go

to Barcelona. They wanted to do it. So, want becomes wanted. They wanted to do it.

The next sound is the /T/ sound. And here, we don’t add an extra syllable. Watch becomes

watched, watch-watched. So, listen again, watched. There’s no extra syllable. The

/T/ sound just goes on to the end of the verb. Now, we use this sound when the verb ends

in a voiceless sound. And, a voiceless sound is when your vocal chords don’t vibrate.

It’s when they don’t vibrate. I laughed really hard. So, laugh becomes laughed. You

can also say laughed, I laughed really hard. My wife kissed me in front of everyone. My

wife kissed me in front of everyone. So kiss becomes kissed. He walked for hours yesterday.

He walked for hours yesterday.

The third sound is the /D/ sound. Again, we don’t add an extra syllable. Just like the

‘t’ sound, we don’t add an extra syllable. Ban becomes banned. So, this shows you again

that you just add the ‘d’ to the verb, ban – banned, banned. Now, we use this when

the verb ends in a voiced sound and this is when your vocal chords vibrate, okay. Here

is an example, “My legs are sore because I played football yesterday.” Play becomes

played. It cleared up in the afternoon. It cleared up in the afternoon. This is talking

about the weather. You can see from the picture, you see clear skies and we use this phrasal

verb ‘clear up’ when we’re talking about going from cloudy or rainy to clear

skies. It cleared up in the afternoon. He realized what he said was wrong. He realized

what he said was wrong.

Now, in order to learn how to pronounce these different sounds correctly with the right

verbs, it’s important to get practice and it’s also important to be aware of this.

So, hopefully this video has helped you understand the 3 ways that we can pronounce past simple

regular verbs. Now, as I said before, it might be confusing to know the difference between

voiceless and voiced sounds. After a while of practicing and listening to these sounds,

you’ll be able to do this automatically. You’ll be able to use the /T/ sound, the

/D/ sound or the /ID/ sound just by having this exposure, by intuitively knowing which

one is right because you will have seen this so many times before. So, that’s why it’s

so important to practice this.

Now, there’s a link here that will take you to the page with more examples and also

more tips about how you can internalize this, how you can use this without thinking about

the rules of pronunciation. So, check out that link. Thanks for watching this episode

and I’ll see you next time.