ED ENDINGS 23 American English Accent Training PERFECT PRONUNCIATION
Tell me if this sounds like natural English.
I watched my mom as she dragged the trash can
to the curb. I wanted to help her. I exclaimed
to her “you should have asked me. I would have
helped you.” not quite. It’s not quite natural
English and that’s because I followed all the
rules for ED endings. Wait. If I followed
all the rules, why didn’t I sound natural?
Because Americans do all sorts of
crazy things with the T and D sounds.
This is video two in our series on ED endings,
regular past tense verbs. If you didn’t see video
one, don’t worry, you’re going to be okay. We’re
going to not just learn the pronunciation rules,
but the pronunciation habits of Americans. So
you can sound totally natural speaking in the
past tense in American English. And remember, if
you like this video, or you learned something new,
please give it a thumbs up and subscribe
with notifications. It helps a lot.
This is the second video and we’re going to dive
deep into rule two. I’ll do a ten second recap
of the rules. Rule one, if the sound at
the end of the infinitive is unvoiced,
ED is pronounced tt– walked. Rule two,
if it’s voiced, the ED is pronounced dd–
agreed. Seemed. Rule three, if that last sound is
T or D, the ED ending is –ihd: needed, painted.
Was that ten seconds or was it longer?
So rule two. The last sound in the infinitive is
a voiced sound. What is a voiced sound? All vowels
and diphthongs are voiced, and some consonants.
First, we’ll talk about vowels and diphthongs.
For example, the word agree ends in the ee vowel,
agree, past tense would be agreed, with the D
sound. Agreed. Now, you probably learned that
D is pronounced dd– a stop of air, voicing
the vocal chords, ddd— dd– dd– and then a
release. Agreed. But we actually have a couple of
different pronunciations that we’ll use for these
rule 2 ED endings. Let’s look at the phrase
I agreed it would be a good idea. Agreed it,
agreed it, agreed di di di dih– agreed it–
That’s a flap of the tongue, it’s not a stop of
air, it’s actually just like the flap T, if you’re
familiar with that sound, the D between vowel or
diphthong sounds is a quick single flap of the
tongue against the roof of the mouth. Agreed it,
agreed it, dadadadaa– agreed it.
So anytime with these ED endings
that you have the sounds of a vowel or
diphthong, D, and then a vowel or diphthong,
it’s a flap. Agreed it. Lied about. Lied
ah– lied about, lied about, lied about.
What if the next word doesn’t
begin with a vowel or diphthong,
but rather a consonant? Let’s take a look at
the example agreed with– I agreed with you.
I agreed with you. It’s not a fully pronounced
D because there’s no release. That would be
this: I agreed with you. I agreed with you. Agreed
with. Agreed with. We don’t do that. We don’t do
that release when the next word begins with a
consonant. We make the noise in the vocal cords,
but we don’t release it. We go right into
the next sound, in this case, w. Agreed
with, agreed with, agreed–
It’s the sound but there’s not a stop and release.
We just carry that voiced D right into the w.
Agreed with. Agreed with. We like to make English
really smooth and that’s why in these cases,
stop consonants are not fully pronounced.
Let’s look at a few more examples where we
have a vowel or diphthong, then the D, and
then the next word begins with a consonant.
He sued the company.
Sued the, sued the.
Do you hear that D in the vocal cords? He
sued the company. Plowed through. Plowed.
Plowed through. Weighed my options. Weighed
my, weighed my, weighed my options.
Now let’s look at a few more examples, you
tell me how the ED ending should be pronounced:
flapped or unreleased? The next word begins
with a consonant sound so this D is unreleased.
Toyed with. Toyed with. Toyed with.
Let’s go to Youglish for an example.
Toyed with– can you say that now really easily
with that unreleased D sound? Toyed with–
toyed with– what about this one?
Is the D flapped or unreleased?
Reviewed a– reviewed a– that’s usually going to
be a flap because the D comes between two vowel
or diphthong sounds. Reviewed a– reviewed
a– let’s go to youglish for an example.
One more. What about this one? Booed by– the next
word begins with a consonant, so that will be an
unreleased D. Booed by– vibrating the vocal
chords, making the D sound but not releasing.
Booed by– let’s look at an example.
So for rule two, we looked at vowel and
diphthongs, plus ed. What about all the consonants
that are voiced? That’s still rule two. And things
start to get a little more complicated. We’ll
look at each of these voiced consonant endings.
Let’s start with R like in the word
fired. He was fired last week. Fired
last, fired last, not dd– a release, that
would be fired last, fired last, but it’s: fired
last, that unreleased D sound in the
vocal cords before the next consonant.
If the next word begins with a vowel or diphthong,
the D will be flapped, but only because of the R,
the rule for flapping is a D or T will be flapped
between two sounds that are vowels and diphthongs,
or if the first sound, the sound before is an
R and the sound after is a vowel or diphthong,
like in the word party, or hardy. Those are both
flaps because of the R, DT, vowel or diphthong
pattern. Party. Hardy. So when we have an ending
R infinitive, plus the D sound, plus the word that
begins with the vowel or diphthong, that D will be
flapped. It’s not like this for any of these other
voiced consonants. It’s just because of the R. He
was fired on monday. Fired on– rarara– single
flap of the tongue. Fired on. And I should say for
any of these rule two words, if the next word is
you or your, a native speaker might turn that
D into a J sound. We do this with any word that
ends in a D when the next word begins with you or
your, like in the phrase: would you– would jjjj–
J sound. Would you. Would you do that for me?
Jj– jj– so all of these words in rule 2
do end in a D sound therefore, you
might hear this happen. Let’s take:
fired you, fired you, as an example, fired you.
Fired you, fired you, jj– with that J sound. How
about g? Another voiced consonant like in the
word beg, begged. She begged all the time. When
the next word begins with a vowel or diphthong,
you will release that D into the next word: begged
all the time, dall– dall– dall– begged all–
begged all the time. But when the next sound is
a consonant, it gets more complicated. Honestly,
there are three ways you might hear it: first,
dropped. I begged for a dog when I was a little
kid. Begged for, begged for. I dropped it there.
Or you might hear that unreleased D sound in
the vocal cords. I begged for a dog. Begged
for a dog. Begged for a dog. Or you might
even hear a light release. I begged for a dog.
Begged ddd– light release. I begged for a dog.
Let me show you what I mean. We’ll go to Youglish.
Now in this one, I hear the D in the vocal cords,
but not released. Begged for, begged for.
In this next one, I don’t really
hear any D. I think it’s dropped.
And now an example where
the D is lightly released.
Like I said in my rule one video, try not to
get stressed out about there being more than one
option if it’s easier for you to always lightly
release your D, that’s okay. As you get more used
to English, and you’re around a lot of native
speakers, or if you’re doing a lot of imitating,
you may find that you start dropping the D
sound more naturally. What we’re doing here
is looking at all the different possibilities and
pronunciations of what you’ll hear when speaking
with American. When a word ends in the J sound,
like in change, I just listened to a bunch of
examples of changed. Let’s listen to a few.
So all those had the released D. Changed. But
it can definitely be dropped too. Let’s
look at a common phrase: changed my mind.
Changed my. It’s fairly common to drop the
ED ending there. The more common a phrase is,
the more likely we’ll do some sort of reduction
there. And that’s what I found often happens here.
I changed my mind, becomes: I change my mind. I
listened to a lot of phrases and the D was almost
always dropped. So it just sounds like the
present tense. Change my mind. Even though
it’s past tense. Here are some examples.
Changed my mind. When I listened in
slow motion, I don’t hear any kind of D.
Here are a few more with that dropped D.
What about a word where the last
sound in the infinitive is the L
like in the word drill? When it’s followed by
a word that begins with a vowel or diphthong,
release the D into that word to link it. Drilled
into, drilled into. Let’s look at some examples
where the next word begins with a consonant.
Drilled to–
the D made in the vocal cords, drilled to–, it’s
not released we just go right into the T sound. If
I released it it would be: drilled to, drilled to,
but it’s drilled to, drilled to. Listen again.
Another example.
Drilled but,
drilled but. I did hear the D released lightly.
Drilled but. This next one was tricky for me.
I had to really slow it down to hear if there is
an unreleased D or not, I think there is.
The most common pronunciation I was hearing
in various situations was an unreleased D.
Now we’ll cover our three nasal consonants:
M, N, and NG. For M, we’ll look at the word
bummed. That means disappointed. We often use
it without. I’m so bummed out. Now in that case,
because the next word begins with the diphthong,
we link with the D –dout, –dout, bummed out–
bummed out– i’m so bummed out.
Let’s listen to an example of
that one.
–dout,
–dout, bummed out–
Now we’ll hear two examples where
bummed is followed by a consonant. First, it’s
dropped, and that’s more common, and then you’ll
hear it where it’s released.
Bummed that–
I didn’t hear that D at all. That
D was dropped. Here it’s released.
Bummed for, bummed for, ddd–
a light release of the D. You know, I haven’t
been talking about much when these ED ending
words are at the end of a thought group.
There, it will usually be a light release.
Let’s look at an example.
Bummed. Light release. That’s a fun word,
isn’t it? I’m feeling bummed. I’m kind of bummed
out. Or you can use it as a noun. It’s a bummer.
Oh, shoot! My favorite restaurant is closed
today. I wanted to eat there. That’s a bummer.
N. N is kind of special. N can make a T silent.
Do you know this rule when T comes after an n,
it’s not uncommon to drop that T like in
the word internet or interview. When D
comes after an N and before another consonant,
it’s pretty common to drop like in grand piano so
it’s really common to drop the D sound in these
ED endings when the sound in the infinitive,
the final sound, was N and the next word
begins with a consonant. Let’s look at several examples.
These are all with the word signed.
All with a dropped D. Now we’ll look at drained.
Also all dropped d’s here.
and as always, when the next
word begins with the vowel or diphthong,
we’ll use the released D to
link in, like in this example:
Signed into– into dadadadada– with that D sound
linking. At the end of a sentence, we’ll probably
release that D. What about NG? Well we don’t have
many words here. A lot of those NG ending verbs
are not regular like: ring, rang, sing, sang,
but we do have the word long, longed. The noun is
longing and this means to yearn for, to have
a strong desire for. I longed for my mother’s
attention. Or I longed for my newborn baby when
I was at work. Or I longed to be taken seriously.
This is often followed by for, which
of course begins with a consonant.
The ED ending can be dropped, but also this is
an emotional word and it will sometimes be more
stressed. I longed for acceptance. And in these
cases, the D will probably be lightly released.
We’ll hear two examples. First, where
it’s dropped and then when it’s not.
Let’s move on to the voiced th. This is another
sound that’s not very common in ED ending words
we have: smoothed, bathed. These words will most
often be followed by a word that begins with a
vowel like ‘smoothed out’ or ‘smoothed over’
or ‘bathed in’. We’ll lightly release the D
into that next sound. But when the next sound
is a consonant, it’s much easier to drop the
ED ending to connect. Here are three examples
dropping the ED ending with the word smoothed.
The v sound like in: moved his car, moved
his, moved his, there I dropped the h in his,
that’s a common reduction, and so the D linked
into the ih sound because that’s a vowel.
Moved his dis dis, I moved his car. At the end
of a sentence, we’ll probably release that D.
He moved. He moved. But when the next sound
is a consonant, you’ll hear both dropped and
lightly released. Here are two examples.
In the first, the D is released. Moved me.
In the second example, it’s dropped.
Words were the infinitive ends in z like
buzzed, the rules are the same. Release D into
a vowel or diphthong like in: buzzed about.
‘Buzzed about’ means really talked about,
there’s a lot of interest about something.
At the end of a thought group, it
will likely be released like here.
And when the next word begins with a consonant,
you’ll have either dropped or lightly released
ending, here’s an example where it’s released
And where the ED ending is completely dropped.
We have one more sound here for rule two, and
it’s the ZH sound. It’s not at all common to have
a verb that ends with ZH plus ED but we do have
barraged. Barraged means to bombard. Aggressively
throw something at someone. And it might not
mean physically throw, you can barrage someone
with words, or someone can feel barraged with
emails, they just keep getting too many emails,
they can’t keep up. This word is usually
followed by with or by, but you might hear
‘barraged us’ followed by a vowel so you’ll link
with the D. They barraged us with phone calls.
Dus dus dus, barraged us, barraged us. At
the end of a sentence, I’ll lightly release
it. I was completely barraged. But followed
by a consonant, it will likely be dropped.
Or lightly released.
Whew!
That is a lot for rule 2, isn’t it? The
pronunciations of the ED ending depend on the
sounds before and after. And the more you study
and watch examples on Youglish or Ted talks, the
more you’ll get used to how Americans pronounce
the ED endings, and you’ll be able to smooth out
your own speech and sound natural. Now let’s have
you train with some of these rule two cases with
a dropped D to make that feel more comfortable
for you. First, you’ll hear a phrase then you’ll
hear just the two-word link in slow motion twice,
three times, repeat the third time, it’s important
to not just learn something but to actually train
it, to speak out loud, to get used to it.
I did not expect rule 2 to take this long. We’re
going to save rule 3 for another video coming
out in a few weeks. While you wait for that
next video, be sure to check out this video.
Also check out my online courses at Rachel’s
English academy. You’ll become a more confident
English speaker. I make new videos every Tuesday.
Be sure to come back next week to watch more.
I love being your English teacher. That’s it
and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.