TED IS DEAD. LONG LIVE TED.
That’s right, boys and girls.
We are going to a funeral.
A big fat funeral.
With an organ.
With a coffin.
With lots of flowers.
With the big black car. (Which is known as a hearse by the way).
And guess what! We won’t be wearing black.
It’s not that kind of funeral.
We are NOT even sad.
TED IS DEAD. LONG LIVE TED.
CELEBRATION MODE ON!
Yes, you heard right.
We are celebrating.
Celebrating the fact that TED is DEAD.
TED IS DEAD
May he rest in peace. RIP. Amen.
What´s that? What did you say? Oh!! Who is Ted?
TED IS DEAD. LONG LIVE TED.
Ted… doesn’t actually exist.
His funeral is just a big publicity stunt.
Well…
…not exactly.
Sorry! You’ll forgive me when you know what this is all about.
Even for the fake death notice / in memoriam cards.
Yes! I faked them.
I know! I’m a terrible person.
This what I had to do to get you to stop.
It’s amazing the lengths I’ve had to go to in order to finally get your attention.
So, now that I have it, let’s get down to business.
TED IS DEAD. LONG LIVE TED.
How the hell DO we pronounce the participles of regular verbs in English? Are you really pronouncing them so badly? Let’s answer the second question first:
Yes.
YES.
YES!!!!!!!!
See, today, we are really going to talk about regular verb participles
Or, more precisely, how to pronounce them.
Correctly.
FOREVER.
TED IS DEAD. LONG LIVE TED.
When you first started learning English you thought that the irregular verbs were the big problem. Firstly, you had to learn how to pronounce the verb. Then you had to learn how to conjugate the verb in the past simple tense and pronounce that. And finally, you had to learn the participle form of the verb and how to pronounce that.
Your teachers tried everything:
- teaching you the ten most common verbs first:
come, eat, find, get, give, go, know, say, see, think
- tables with three columns.
come, came, come
eat, ate, eaten
find, found, found
get, got, gotten
give, gave, given
go, went, gone
know, knew, known
say, said, said
see, saw, seen
think, thought, thought
- grouping types of verbs together
buy, bought, bought
fight, fought, fought
think, thought, thought
- games
- songs
- charts to put in your room
Was it easy?
Hell no!
You had to learn them. You had to sit down and LEARN them. That is memorise them.
And learn them again. And memorise them again. And again.
And AGAIN.
Until you would have done anything BUT study English.
TED IS DEAD. LONG LIVE TED.
TED IS DEAD. LONG LIVE TED.
TED IS DEAD. LONG LIVE TED.
TED IS DEAD. LONG LIVE TED.
So, when somebody told you that regular verb participles were formed by just adding -ED to the verb root …
CLEAN Þ CLEANED
WALK Þ WALKED
… you thought…
“Easy peasy! All I have to do to be perfect is add the syllable “ed” to the ends of all the verbs. Anyone can do that!”
And that’s what you’ve been doing. Haven’t you?
Ever since.
And guess what!
YOU ARE WRONG.
Wrong.
W r o n g.
So, very, VERY, WRONG.
TED IS DEAD. LONG LIVE TED.
Okay.
So, things might be getting clearer.
There is a mistake. And when there is a mistake, what do you do? Well, you can do what you’ve been doing up until now and keep making it OVER and OVER and OVER.
Or… you fix it.
Which is what we are going to do now.
If you are a grammar teacher or a grammar nerd, you might want to take a chill pill or tranquilizer at this point, because I am going to take some short cuts. Sometimes, you have to be practical even at the risk of being accused of being a “lazy teacher”.
I just want to get you all started down the right path.
How the “ed” is pronounced depends on the sound we hear right at the end of the original verb.
The sound at the end of clean is “n”.
The sound at the end of check is “k”.
The sound at the end of pass is “s”.
However…
…the sound at the end of dance is also “s”. It isn’t “c” and it isn’t “e”. It’s “s”.
The sound at the end of decide is “d”.
The sound at the end of hate is “t”.
So, the million-dollar question is: what the hell does this have to do with regular verb participles?
And the answer to that question is EVERYTHING.
The last sound determines how we should pronounce the -ed at the end of the participle.
TED IS DEAD. LONG LIVE TED.
When the sound at the end of a verb is “d” or “t”, the -ed is pronounced exactly as you read it.
The participle form of add (added), is pronounced /á-ded/
The participle form of unite (united), is pronounced /you-nái-ted/
uni-ted
deci-ded
Get it?
I’m going to let you in on a big secret.
A State Secret, but of this blog.
READY?
TED IS DEAD is a slogan I invented one day in class.
I was frustrated.
I was annoyed.
I wanted to shout and my students and scream at them.
Why? Because they kept making the same mistake with participles and it didn’t seem to matter WHAT I did or said. They kept making them. I prayed to the heavens and inspiration came!
TED IS DEAD!
We only pronounce the -ED as ED after T and D.
So, -ted.
And, -ded.
Okay… so the word ded doesn’t exist, but the word dead, which is pronounced exactly the same DOES.
So – TED IS DEAD.
Some purists might say the -ED is pronounced more like -ID after the T sound and the D sound. They are probably right. But I will be happy with ED or ID or any variation.
And what happens when we add -ed to verbs that end in all the other sounds of the English language?
What happens after the letter k, or the letter p, or the letter m?
This is where grammar teachers and perfectionists will hate me.
But I don’t care.
The “ed” is absorbed into the verb and it is pronounced ‘t.
Parked is pronounced /park’t/
Jumped is pronounced /jump’t/
Danced is pronounced /dans´t/
Cleaned is pronounced something similar to /kleen’t/
Seemed is pronounced something similar to /seem’t/
Smiled is pronounced something similar to /smyl’t/
How about you give it a go yourself?
Cover the third column and read the participles in the middle column aloud. Uncover the third column to see how many you got right?
VERB PARTICIPLE HOW TO SAY IT
calculate calculated /cal-kew-láy-ted/
cheat cheated /chée-ted/
collect collected /col-ék-ted/
collide collided /col-ái-ded/
decide decided /dee-sái-ded/
direct directed /dai-rék-ted/
dust dusted /dúhs-ted/
knit knitted /níh-ted/
point pointed /póyn-ted/
skate skated /skéi-ted/
treat treated /trée-ted/
visit visited /víh-sih-ted/
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And so, will I.
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