ED ENDINGS 33 American English Accent Training PERFECT PRONUNCIATION
What happens to the T in wanted or
parted? The ED endings in American English
are absolutely crazy. We have rules but we don’t
always follow them. Today, we’re going over rule
3 for the ED ending verbs. Don’t worry, if you
missed one or two, you will not be lost here.
These are the words where the ED ending adds not
just an extra sound, but a full extra syllable.
We’re going to make sure that you know how to
integrate them smoothly and perfectly into your
speech so you sound natural speaking
in the past tense in American English.
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We did a deep dive on rule one.
Final sounds in the infinitive
is unvoiced, tt– like in walked.
We did a deep dive on rule two.
Final sound in the infinitive is voiced. The
ED becomes dd– a D sound like in seemed.
Now, we have one more rule, and it’s short. There
are only two sounds involved: the last sound in
the infinitive is T or D. Then the ED ending is
not just an extra sound, but an extra syllable.
Need. A one-syllable word becomes needed, a
two-syllable word. Correct, a two-syllable word,
becomes corrected, a three syllable word.
This ending syllable is always unstressed.
Today, we’ll go deep on rule three. What
exactly does it mean? What are all the cases,
and how can you use this to sound more
natural and relaxed speaking English?
With this extra syllable, we have the IH
sound or you can think of it as the schwa,
plus D. The ending D will always be a flap sound
when it links into a word that begins
with a vowel or diphthong. For example:
ended up—
Ended up, ende-rarara– ended up, a quick flap
of the tongue for that ED ending. Let’s look at
another example: acted on—becomes: acted on,
acted on, acted on. That flap of the tongue.
At the end of a thought group, or when
the next word begins with a consonant,
that will usually be an unreleased D. Ddd– That
means we make a sound in the vocal cords for the D
but we don’t release it, dd– it’s
just dd– for example: it ended.
End of my thought group, I didn’t
release the d. It ended. Ddd—
That vibrating of the vocal cords
for that voiced sound, ended.
Now if it links into a word that begins with a
consonant, we’ll also make that unreleased sound.
Ended my, ended my, so it’s not ended my, ended,
ended. We don’t release it. It’s ended my, ended
my, ended my. Releasing the D. Ended my, ended
my, just a little bit extra. We don’t want to
make that much of the D so we vibrate the vocal
chords but then go on to the next sound. Now if
the next word is you or you’re, you might hear the
ending become a J sound. Ended your, ended your.
Great. But now let’s look at some cases that
affect the T or D at the end of the infinitive.
So not the ED ending but the T at the end of the
word ‘heat’ for example. Heat, id, does not equal
heated, because the rule for the T is that if
it comes between two vowel or diphthong sounds,
it’s a flap T. So it’s not tt–heated, that’s
a true T, it’s heated, dadadada– heated,
heated. So any word where there’s a vowel
or diphthong plus T and then an ED ending,
that’s a flap T. Heated, dated, noted,
weighted. Dadadada– All Flap t’s.
The flap T rule also applies when the sound before
was an R, so R plus T plus vowel or diphthong
is a flap T. That means all the RT,ED ending words
have a flap T like: pardon, par-da– par-dada–
pardon. Pardon. Alerted
dadada– alertuh– alerted.
And this is also true for the D. A D
between vowels or after an R before a
vowel or diphthong is a flap. So for example,
in the word ‘boarded’ boar– dadadada–
that D at the end of the infinitive
is a flap. Boarded. Worded. Worded.
What would it sound like if
it wasn’t a flap, but a real
D with the stop and the release? Ddd– that
would sound like this: worded. Worded. Worded.
It’s too much D, we make a flap. Worded. Graded.
Flap sound. Let’s look at another case. The sound
before the T of the word in the infinitive
is an N. We might drop that T. We do that in
the NT combination sometimes like in the word
‘interview’. It’s very common to drop that T.
So let’s look at the word want, past tense, with
the ED ending, wanted, but it’s actually very
common to drop the T sound in that word, and
it becomes wanted, wanted, this pronunciation
is more common than the pronunciation with
the T. Let’s go to Youglish for examples.
Wanted. Each one with no T sound at all. Isn’t
this interesting? It’s the T at the end of want
that puts this into rule three because the final
sound is the T, but we don’t even say that.
This is true also of the word counted,
you’ll often hear that T dropped, counted.
There will definitely be cases where you hear the
T in ‘counted’ but often not. Pointed is another
word where usually, the T will be dropped. I
pointed out the mistake: pointed out, pointed out,
no T. What about the word planted becoming
planted? Now I listened to a bunch of examples,
there it does seem to be more common to
actually say the T sound than to drop it,
planted. But even that one can go
either way. Planted or planted.
What about ND plus ED ending? We never drop
that D. Ended. If we dropped it it would be
ended, and that would sound very strange to us,
so ended, ended, bonded, we don’t drop the D.
In the other ending clusters, we do say the
T or D. For example the PT ending, prompt, or
interrupt. We do say that T when we
add on the ED. Prompted. Interrupted.
Ted, ted, ted. A light true T. Acted. Lifted.
Folded. We say the D in fold. Folded. Ded. Folded.
And those are the cases for rule three. Wow. When
you add up all these videos, we’ve been talking
about ED endings for well over 30 minutes.
Things just aren’t as simple as they seem.
Now, let’s test your memory for the main
three rules. Is the ED ending a T sound,
a D sound, or an extra syllable?
Here’s your first word. Is it agreet, agreed,
or agree-ed? The final sound on the word
when it’s in the infinitive is a vowel, that’s
voiced, so it’s rule three, a D sound. Agreed.
What about this word? Is it bombet, bombed, or
bomb-ed? The last sound is voiced, it’s not a T or
a D, therefore it’s rule two, a D sound: bombed.
What about this word? Is it
talket, talked, or talk-ed?
The last sound of the word in
the infinitive is unvoiced.
Therefore the ending is unvoiced, T, talked, now
let’s listen to a bunch of examples for rule 3,
ED endings. Some of them will have
a dropped T, some of them will
have a flap. Get used to simplifying and
linking these words into the next words.
First, you’ll hear a phrase. Then
you’ll hear just the two-word link
like ‘counted my’ in slow motion, several
times, repeat the last time, the third time.
Repeat that slow motion link.
It’s important not to just
learn something but to actually train
it, to speak out loud to get used to it.
Now you could prepare a lecture
on how to pronounce ED endings.
There are so many details involved, aren’t
there? The playlist for all three of these
videos is here for your reference. You
may find that you want to watch them
several times to really get all the
rules and pronunciations into your brain.
Thanks so much for sticking with me.
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