Those two small letters –ed are a whole heap of trouble! Unbelievably, those two small letters can be pronounced three distinct, separate ways in different verbs without altering their spelling in any way. Confused? Let’s delve in deeper. Everyone loves a regular verb, particularly a verb in the simple past which describes complete actions and remains the same regardless of the person (I walked, he walked, we walked etc....)so should be a gift to any ESL learner. We’re talking here only about verbs which are regular in the simple past, of which there are thousands, for example: needed, lived, and shopped. However, those three verbs just mentioned are all pronounced differently in English- and there are no visual clues to help you with the pronunciation. Many advanced speakers of English as a second language learn to imitate the pronunciation of all common verbs so that they would have no difficulty with the three above, but it’s incredibly useful to know the rule behind these differences, so that you can apply it to new words that enter your vocabulary.

One logical question you might be asking is: why this irregular pronunciation? Wouldn’t life be much easier if we just kept everything the same? Well, in fact, no, the different pronunciations are there to make speech a lot easier, particularly fast speech. After certain consonant sounds have been formed in the mouth it’s very difficult to make another immediately afterwards, without having a vowel sound in between to give the mouth time to re-adjust. You can test this yourself by trying to form a nice hard English /t/- mouth wide like a smile and tongue tapping the roof of your mouth expelling a puff of air- and straight after a /d/- lips in normal position, tongue again tapping the roof of the mouth and air now vibrating in the throat. Tricky, it’s like a tongue twister! But with a vowel between them, such as in the name ‘Ted,’ you’ll find it much better.

We need only three simple rules to get the pronunciation right in every single regular simple past verb, but you also need a clear understanding of voiced and unvoiced sounds. Basically, voiced sounds begin with vibration in the vocal cords, and unvoiced sounds only need a small puff of air the mouth to be heard. Helpfully, all vowel sounds are voiced, so write that down and commit it to memory! The easiest way to find out if your consonant sound is voiced or not is to pronounce it normally (the way that it would be said within a word) and place one hand on your throat. If you feel your vocal cords vibrate, congratulations you have a voiced sound! If not, it’s probably unvoiced, check by putting your hand in front of your mouth as if you were yawning and feeling for the small puff of air. Here are some examples of unvoiced sounds for you to test: /ʃ/ /p/ /k/ /f/.

We’re on the home stretch now and can begin with the first pronunciation rule. If the infinitive of the verb ends with a /t/ or /d/ sound you should pronounce the simple past –ed ending as /ɪd/ as in ‘lid’ ‘kid’ and ‘did. Remember that we are speaking about the final sound of the infinitive and not the final letter- therefore the word ‘bite’ would fall under this rule. Go ahead and practise with these verbs that end with a /t/ or /d/ in their infinitive: wanted /wɒntɪd/ seated /s tɪd/ and seeded //s dɪd/.

Secondly, the rule for verbs that in their infinitive end with a voiced sound, in the simple past their –ed ending must be pronounced /d/. Learners are often tempted to place a short vowel or pause between the end of the verb stem and this final sound, probably because of the way the word is written, but resist this and follow your verb stem immediately with a short, soft and often quite quiet /d/. This final sound is never stressed, and may seem unimportant, but is actually crucial for establishing the correct verb tense. If it’s not there, people will notice! Have a try with these: lied /lʌɪd/ waved /weɪvd/ filled /fɪld/ and enjoyed /ɪnˈdʒɔɪd/.

Finally, our last rule: if the verb ends with an unvoiced sound in its infinitive, pronounce its simple past ending as a short hard, clipped /t/. In practice, it is nothing more than a quick push of air past your teeth, and often a very easy sound for learners to make. Again it must follow the stem of the verb immediately without any hesitation or vowel between. However, something that will help you is that you try to make a /d/ sound with your mouth after a word such as ‘push’ you’ll see how slowly the mouth is able to do it, a /t/ is naturally much easier. Take your learning on the road with these tests: booked /bʊkt/picked /pɪkt/wished /wɪʃt/ lunched /lʌntʃt/. You are now armed with the tools to tackle any regular simple past verb!

To delve in deeper - a useful phrase meaning to get more information about something
Tongue-twister – a sequence of sounds or words that are hard to say together, people often attempt them as a game
To be on the home stretch- to be approaching the end of something

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