How to Pronounce: Grammatical endings, part 2

Hello! I’m John Russell. The regular past tense ending of American English reminds me of the Three Musketeers. How could the –ed ending remind me of the famous French trio? I’ll explain. In a previous episode, I talked about two different ways Americans pronounce the –ed ending of past tense verbs, as in Liked Loved Notice that the –ed ending in liked sounded different than the –ed ending in loved. These are like the first two musketeers. But wait! There’s a third way to pronounce the –ed ending? It’s like the dramatic entrance of the third musketeer! In American English, if the last letter of a verb is spelled with a d or a t, the –ed past tense ending is often pronounced as /ɪd/. Consider this example. I visited my friend. Note that the verb visit ends in a –t. Because it ends in –t, we generally pronounce the –ed past tense ending as /ɪd/: Visited Consider other common verbs that end in a –d or a –t. Avoid Admit Wait In the past tense, they sound like this: avoided admitted waited So, now you are familiar with the three ways to pronounce regular past tense verbs in American English. The next time you listen to Americans speak, try to pay careful attention to how they pronounce verbs in the past tense. I bet you will meet one or more of the three endings. Keep up the good work! Originally published at - https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a...