How to Pronounce the ED Ending in English (3 Rules Explained)

0:00If English pronunciation feels confusing, then you need to listen to this episode because today we are giving you one rule that will instantly improve your accent. Welcome back to the Learn English Podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally. In today's episode, I want to talk about the past tense ending that we have on a lot of our verbs. You've probably seen this a lot when you've been studying English and it is the ED ending that we put on the past tense of most verbs in English. However, I have noticed that a lot of people don't know how to correctly pronounce this ending and they don't know that there's actually three different ways to pronounce it. On today's episode, I want to discuss these three different ways of pronouncing the ending and go over the rules so you can see when you pronounce it one way versus another.

1:02If you're interested in learning about how to improve your pronunciation with these past tense well, of course, practicing your listening comprehension, then follow along because we're about to begin. Before we get started, I want to remind you to look at the description of this podcast episode. There you will find a list of the words and phrases that I used in the episodes so you can take them, study them, and build your English vocabulary. Now let's talk about this ED ending. You have seen it if you have seen past tense verbs. This is the ending that regular verbs get added onto them to show that the action was taken in the past. For example, if I'm going to go on a walk tomorrow, I would say I'm going to go on a walk. If I'm currently doing that action right now, I would say I'm walking. If I did it yesterday, I would say I walked yesterday.

2:06So I took that verb to walk and I changed the ending to be ED, which made my verb now walked. That ED ending is extremely common. You'll see it on a lot of different verbs, but I've noticed that a lot of students don't know how to correctly pronounce it. Even though multiple verbs have this ED ending, there's actually three different ways that you can pronounce it. I notice a lot of times people will only do one way of pronouncing it, which makes their accent seem a little bit strange. It makes them seem like maybe they could do some pronunciation improvement. I'm going to go over the rules, but I'm also going to do some example sentences so you can hear how I pronounce it and so you can practice it as well. Let's start with the first way. The first way is the easiest and that is when you actually pronounce both of the letters in the past tense ending. This means that you pronounce that ED sound

3:11as ED. ED is a person's name. It's a man's name. If you know someone whose name is ED, then you can remember how to pronounce this. It's a very straightforward way of being able to pronounce this ending. This way of pronouncing the ending is when you have a verb that ends with a T or a D. For example, if we look at the three verbs, weight, need, and want. All of those verbs end with either a T or a D. So when we change them to be in the past tense form, we're going to say weighted, needed, wanted. Here are some example sentences with this pronunciation. We wanted to spend some time in the park. However, when it got dark, we waited by the gate for right home. Finally, my mom decided to pick us up. Wanted, weighted, and decided all have that ED sound to the end of

4:16the verb because they end with either a T or a D at the end of the original verb form. That is the easiest pronunciation. Now let's go into the second one. The second one is where you will notice a difference between British English and American English. In American English, we keep the ED ending in the second time of pronunciation, but we actually pronounce the sound like a T sound. However, if you study British English, you will actually see that change in the writing. So when they write those verbs, they actually change the spelling to a T at the end. And I think this is easier for students because it makes it more obvious that it is supposed to be a T sound ending instead of an ED sound. Changing the ED sound to a T sound is called an unvoiced pronunciation. And it occurs when the verb ends in an unvoiced consonant. These are consonants that end with F-K-P-S-C-H

5:26or T-H. For example, if we look at the word help, the word help ends with a P. So if we're going to say past tense, we're not going to say help ED. That's not how we pronounce it. We say helped, helped. Do you hear that little sound that I'm putting at the end of my word? So what you want to do is you want to have your tongue go to your hard palate. The hard palate is the space right behind your front teeth on the roof of your mouth. You want your tongue to hit there and you want to do a little bit of an aspiration, a little bit of air passing when you do that. So when you pronounce it, it's going to sound like this. Again, let's practice that word. Help. Help. Some more examples you have look, laugh, or watch. All of those are what we call unvoiced consonants where your vocal chords are not vibrating. So we're going to take those and we're going to change them. Looked, watched, laughed.

6:33If you listen closely, you can hear that little sound that I'm putting at the end. So let's do some practice sentences with this pronunciation. We walked to the park before sunset. There, we watched the kids as they skipped across the playground. We laughed a lot and had a good time. And the last way to pronounce this ending is when you omit the E. So instead of pronouncing it as end, we're just going to just pronounce the D sound in it. This occurs when the verb ends in a voiced consonant that's not the letter D or letter T or when it ends in a vowel. It ending in the vowel is probably the easiest way to say it. If you don't know the voice versus unvoiced consonants, it might be a little bit trickier. But every time when you see a verb ending in a vowel, that's when you're going to get this pronunciation. Some of the voiced consonants here, you have B, G, L, M, N, R, V, N, Z.

7:36I know that's a lot of letters. It's okay. You don't need to try to memorize everything. Like I said, just the more practice you get, the easier it's going to get. And let's start with the word play. The word play ends with a Y, which is a vowel in English. So when we change it to be past tense, we're not going to say play-ed. We're not going to say plate. Instead, we're going to say played. Played. So if you listen to how I pronounce the ending of that, the T sound was a sound where your tip of your tongue goes through your root for your mouth and you do some air passing through you kind of expel some air over that sound. Here, we're going to make it softer. We're not going to be so forceful with the air that's going through our mouth. So if you listen to this, played. You can hear the difference. Played. Played. My tongue is still touching the hard palate, but my tongue is a lot more flat, not as pointed as it is with the teeth. A little bit more of a flat part,

8:40contacting with the roof of your mouth, and just a little bit more gentle when you're pushing the air out to make that sound. Some other examples here, we have clean, call, and love. Clean and call and with a consonant, we have an L or an N as the final letter, and love ends with a vowel, the letter E. So in this case, when we pronounce these, we're going to say cleaned, called, loved. Let's do some practice sentences so you can hear some more. We played volleyball for an hour. I loved spending time with my friends. Afterwards, I called my brother and begged him to pick me up. Those are the three different pronunciations for this ending. Now I want to do one last paragraph that has all of the sounds mixed in. I'm going to put this paragraph in the

9:40description of this podcast so you can practice, listen to me say these words, and then try to pronounce them with me, and then try it on your own. That way you can really get a fill for how to pronounce these different endings and really practice these different words. Yesterday we visited the lake and watched the birds as they floated on the water. We walked along the trail and laughed at some funny signs we spotted. After a while, we played music on a speaker and danced together by the shore. Finally, tired and happy, we called a taxi and headed home. Are you able to pronounce those correctly? Are you able to know which words have that different ED pronunciation? If you aren't able to do it yet, don't worry. Like I said, it is about practice. Practice, pronounce these words with me, practice them on your own, and you're going to notice that you're going to get better over time.

10:40The more you listen to these different words being pronounced, the more you practice, the easier it's going to be. I hope you liked this episode. I hope you learned something and you're able to practice your pronunciation. If you liked this episode, if you want more pronunciation episodes, I do have a playlist or I have gone over really tricky words and different sounds in the English language. I will leave a link for that so you can check those episodes out if you are interested. Also, just leave a comment. Tell me if you liked this type of episode if you want more episodes like this in the future because there are a lot of weird sounds and a lot of weird pronunciation in English. So there are a lot more episodes I can do. Just let me know if that is something you're interested in. If the podcast is helping you learn English, if you are enjoying it, please consider leaving us a rating on whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast on. You can also tell a friend or tell someone who is learning English so we can continue to grow our audience. You can

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