- ED endings can be everywhere: past simple, participles, adjectives... and many students find them too difficult to be pronounced. They are right, but with some easy and helpful tips, you will never make a mistake when pronouncing them.
The following
explanation you are about to read may be a
crazy idea for many, overmore
teachers, but some years ago I realized students
cannot learn
phonetics when their level is low, they have enough with all the grammar :). Even higher levels are neither interested in learning the sounds, but they all want to
know how to pronounce words correctly. So I
created a very
easy way to l
earn,
know and
remember to pronounce this ending.
I am very proud to tell you that not only all my students perfectly understand how it works but they kill the pronunciation as well.
For
Spanish speakers it is almost
impossible to
pronounce two consonants sounds as
"k" and
"t" together when they are
at the end of a word. What I always say to my students when facing these problems is to
pronounce slowly both sounds and with a bit of practice, they will
get it.
Let's start from the very beginning:
There are
3 different sounds for an
-ED ending, you know them for sure:
/t/,
/d/,
/id/
Remember something: in English almost everything is related to sounds and not to the spelling.
When to pronounce each of those sounds?
What if I tell you to take only into account the /id/ sound?
It is crazy, I know, but it is the easiest to remember. You'll see in a moment.
Keep reading.
Have a
look at the following words:
decide -> /disaid/
hate -> /heit/
interest -> /intrest/
remind -> /rimaind/
All of them have something
in common, their
last sound is a
/t/ or a
/d/, for that reason, when adding the
-ed at the end of the word, it is going to
be pronounced as
/id/
decided -> /disai
did/
hated -> /hei
tid/
interested -> /intres
tid/
remind -> /rimain
did/
Now, what happens to these other words?
listen -> /lis
n/
watch -> /wɒt
ʃ/
ask -> /ɑːs
k/
follow -> /fɒlə
ʊ/
Are their last sounds a /d/ or /t/?
NO, THEY AREN'T. So they can
never be pronounced with an
/id/ sound when adding
-ed.
listened -> /lisnid/ ->
NO, its last sound is /n/, so the pronunciation is different: /lis
nd/
watched -> /wɒtʃid/ ->
NO, its last sound is /ʃ/, so the pronunciation is different: /wɒt
ʃt/
ask -> /ɑːskid/ ->
NO, its last sound is /k/, so the pronunciation is different: /ɑːs
kt/
follow -> /fɒləʊid/ ->
NO, its last sound is /ʊ/, so the pronunciation is different: /fɒlə
ʊd/
I hope it's much
clearer now how to pronounce these endings. If you want to learn some more, click
here
You can also read this post in Spanish
here.