Search results for 'tag:Past tenses tag:Consonants' matching tags 'Past tenses' and 'Consonants'

Re: Consonant cluster reduction

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:54:33 GMT

Hi. On TV you may not hear the sounds, the tongue-play within the chamber of the mouth and the tiny air stops, etcetera that occur when people speak. You need to be face-to-face with your pronunciation coach.

I can well see how you "hear" FAX for facts, because the sounds are about identical in those two words. You know from the context when someone tells you to send them a FAX that they are not talking about the "facts." That is the context or the syntax of the language.

GIFTS is spelled that way, but, actually when you pronounce it, you DO HEAR "GIFS." The ortography of words is a clue to their meaning, so the spelling is important when you are reading.

ASKED. Pronounce ASK. Feel and hear the little "kick" when you produce the "k." Now, add the past tense syllable, "ed." In this particular word, "ed" is pronounced as if it were a "t." Your mouth cannot go from the "K" to the "T" without trouble, so the "K" gets forgiven, softened, blurred in pronunciation..it just about disappears totally so that your tongue is able to touch the alveolar ridge just behind your front teeth. That is the positioning of the tongue within the mouth that causes this particular phenomenon. KICKed...see above for "asked." These kinds of sound changes are required due to the placement of the tongue.

On that subject, I might point your interest to the pronunciation of "a" or "an." Before a consonant you use "a" and before a vowel you use "an."
Try it. A dog. A cat. A shoe. A house. Now consonants.....An elephant, An egg, An old man, An idiot. If you were to reverse this speaking pattern, you'd quickly feel the ugliness and difficulty forced into your tongue movements.

An dog; an cat, an shoe; an house..a elephant; a egg; a old man; a idiot.
Carole in Umatilla, OR

Re: W is a vowel

CalifJim — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:46:45 GMT

shaved
I'm sure that in the word 'cow,' <w> is not functioning as a vowel.

So then it's a consonant, I suppose.

But then what are we to make of the people who wrote the rule on forming past tenses when they said:

If a word ends in a single stressed vowel and a single final consonant (hop, sip, etc., and like bow or cow, presumably, if w is indeed a consonant), then form the past by doubling the final consonant and adding "ed".

So the past of these verbs is then "bowwed" and "cowwed"? No. That's not right!

I don't think the guys that wrote that rule were thinking of w in bow or cow as a consonant.

Re: Run + ning is related to pronunciation? Thanks !

abbie1948 — Thu, 28 Apr 2005 09:38:03 GMT

Hi Xcats,

This is related to the spelling of the past tense forms of regular verbs; it also applies to the "ing" form.

spelling of regular affirmative past tense forms

Most regular verbs: add -ed

work âworked
help âhelped
start â started
rain ârained
stay âstayed
show â showed
wonder âwondered
visit â visited
gallopâgalloped

Verbs endingin -e: add -d

hope âhoped
decide âdecided

Verbs ending in one stressed vowel +one consonant (except wory): double the consonant and add -ed

shop â shopped
plan â planned
refer âreferred
regret â regretted

Verbs ending in consonant + -y: hurryâ hurried
change y to i and add-ed

cryâcried
studyâstudied

Verbs ending in-c have ck in the past (e.g. picnic â picnicked).

In British English, -l -is doubled in the past after a short vowel even if the vowel is not stressed:

travel â travelled.

(from Practical English Usage, Michael Swan)

Re: Rules of Pronounciation for regular verbs in the Simple Past needed

CalifJim — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 05:07:06 GMT
If you need a detailed description for American English, here's something I came across in some old notes of mine. It's got some exercises at the end too! The phonetic transcriptions aren't really anything standard, but I think you can figure them out.

Past tense of Regular Verbs
Phonetic Considerations

/xxxxx/ shows how the word is pronounced.
"xxxxx" shows how the word is written.
These guidelines do not apply to irregular verbs.

1. Verbs that end in /d/.
Add /id/.

/pad/ /padid/ ("pad","padded")
/land/ /landid/ ("land","landed")
/bOrd/ /bOrdid/ ("board","boarded")
/trAd/ /trAdid/ ("trade","traded")

2. Verbs that end in a consonant and /t/.
The final /t/ remains the same. Add /id/.

/akt/ /aktid/ ("act","acted")
/irupt/ /iruptid/ ("erupt","erupted")
/lift/ /liftid/ ("lift","lifted")
/twist/ /twistid/ ("twist","twisted")

The verb form "wanted" drops the /t/ in most everyday conversations.
"wanted" = /waunid/. Use /waunt'id/ only in careful speech.

3. Verbs that end in a vowel* and /.t/.
*This includes R-colored vowels.
Change the /.t/ to /d/ and add /id/.

/pa.t/ /padid/ ("pat","patted") Intervocallic "t" and "d"
/stAR.t/ /stARdid/ ("start","started") are neutralized!
/sE.t/ /sEdid/ ("seat","seated") That means "t between vowels"
/nO.t/ /nOdid/ ("note","noted") and "d between vowels"
/wA.t/ /wAdid/ ("wait","waited") are pronounced the same.

/.t/ represents an unreleased /t/.
Final "t" after "r" or after a vowel graph is normally unreleased.

If you need to be very precise, keep the /t/, for example, if you didn't understand a word, ask:
Did you say "seated" or "seeded"? ... "waded" or "waited"?
/sE-t'ed/ or /sE-ded/ /wA-ded/ or /wA-t'ed/
It would obviously do no good to ask "Did you say '/wAdid/' or '/wAdid/'?" !!!
But in normal conversation in the U.S. and in Canada, these /t/'s are pronounced as /d/'s. /sEdid/ = "seated" or "seeded"; /wAdid/ = "waded" or "waited".

4. Verbs that end in an unvoiced consonant other than /t/.
(That is, those that end in /p/,/k/,/f/,/s/,/Sh/, or /tSh/.)
Add /t/.

/hO.p/ /hOpt/ ("hope","hoped")
/bA.k/ /bAkt/ ("bake","baked")
/laf/ /laft/ ("laugh","laughed")
/lAs/ /lAst/ ("lace","laced")
/wauSh/ /wauSht/ ("wash","washed")
/latSh/ /latSht/ ("latch","latched")

Since /tSh/ = /Ch/, the last example could have been written phonetically as:

/laCh/ /laCht/

5. Verbs that have any other ending (voiced consonants other than 'd', or vowels).
Add /d/.

/nAm/ /nAmd/ ("name","named")
/nab/ /nabd/ ("nab","nabbed")
/shO/ /shOd/ ("show","showed")
/beg/ /begd/ ("beg","begged")
/rAn/ /rAnd/ ("rain","rained")
/dodZh/ /dodZhd/ ("dodge","dodged")

Since /dZh/ = /j/, the last example could have been written phonetically as:

/doj/ /dojd/
____________________________________________

Practice saying the base form (shown) and the past tense of these verbs.
Write out the phonetic form of at least 5 of each type.
Type 1. afford, add, fade, pad, kid, side, confide, card, board, weed, wend, blend, befriend, sand, attend, heed, aid, bread, hood
Type 2. act, twist, conduct, select, perfect, construct, elect, dust, toast, fast, evict, dent, vent, opt, adopt, rust, salt, bolt, tilt, predict, lift
Type 3. start, bait, state, sight, depart, court, assert, avert, create, plate, bleat, tote, coat, boot, loot, bat, fret, edit, inhibit
Type 4. rope, soap, cope, nap, trap, trip, skip, bake, rake, fake, poke, soak, lock, nick, ache, laugh, quaff, rough, cough, doff, roof, miss, place, trace, wish, fish, finish, polish, abolish, itch, reach, leach, cinch, enrich
Type 5. bathe, fan, yell, empty, try, cry, snow, flow, pardon, consider, pray, saw, prove, love, live, smile, mine, team, steam, scream, ding, file, fool, fill

Re: Why is it You were and not You was?

pemmican — Mon, 26 Apr 2004 15:49:25 GMT
Hi Timbo,

nice to meet you - haven't talked to you yet, have I?

Where in Australia are you from?
As I can see, your e-mail address is not an Australian one - do you live in Switzerland at the moment?

I was wondering you knew about the German forms, so do you learn German?
Actually, we have three forms for English "you":
"du" (2nd person singular),
"ihr" (2nd person plural) and
"Sie" (formal 2nd person, both singular and plural).

I posted a long reply already to a similar question about the forms of to be in a former thread, I searched for it, but unfortunately I haven't been able to find it yet - maybe the admins could post a link to where it has gone to now??!!

Maybe I can give a short answer nevertheless, I hope I can remember all the important facts...

Language tends to become simpler, i.e. irregularities are reduced.
This development is a very slow one of course, and the more common a word is, i.e. the more it is used in daily conversation, the harder it is to get rid of the irregularities.
You can see that especially in inflections of words.
Strong verbs e.g. tend to become weak ones as that is a more productive way of "building" forms of the tenses
(learn - learnt - learnt e.g. becomes learned - learned, and work - wrought - wrought changed to worked - worked).

It's a bit more difficult with was/were as I have to refer to Middle-High-English and Middle-High-German now, ok let's have a try:
You maybe know that English and German both are Germanic languages, therefore they are related of course.

English however, is usually a step further already in its way of dropping irregularities, while German is not, but the word "to be" bears some difficulties: Due to the fact that it is a verb that is used very often, the forms hardly change; you could say "to be" is sort of a "fossil verb".

The past tense forms of "to be" in Middle-High-German were

ich was (current German: ich war) = I was
du waere (cG: du warst) = you were
er was (cG: er war) = he was

wir waren (cG: wir waren) = we were
ir wart (cG: ihr wart) = you were
si waren (cG: sie waren) = they were

You can see now, that the forms of current German are more regular than they were in Middle-High-German:
The -s in 1st and 3rd person has been replaced by -r, that consonant that occurs in the plural.
The form for 2nd person singular had been derived from the plural forms of the past tense, and, if possible, with Umlaut, this Umlaut has been replaced by the stem -a- in a later step of simplifying.

English on the other hand still keeps this old -s in the 1st and 3rd person plural: I/he "was".

It is a bit more difficult with the form of the 2nd person singular and plural:

Some of you were quite on the right way already:
Actually, the old form of "you" for 2nd person singular was "thou", for 2nd person plural "you" - so there was a difference in former times between singular and plural (as there still is in German).

The form of "to be" for 2nd person singular was "thou wert" - compare with: "thou didst, thou hadst", etc. - as you can see: these old forms also kept the old inflection ending "-(s)t"; also compare to the German forms above.

There has been another form for "thou wert", later on which used to be "thou wast", here you can see that the old Umlaut had been eliminated and the -r has been replaced by -s to have a difference between singular and plural forms.

In a further step then finally, the difference between the singular and plural form of the 2nd person had been dropped and the singular person had totally been replaced by the plural form: "you", for both singular and plural, so that is why the current form is "you were" rather than "you was".

If you compare these forms in one more step now with the Dutch forms of "to be" (past tense), you can see, that here, the form was indeed replaced by the singular, more regular form - the old s/r change is still kept though:

ik was
jij was
hij was

wij waren
jullie waren
zij waren

I hope I could help you out and this was not too confusing for you.
Maybe one of the admins will find my former posting reply about the "to be" problem, it might be a better help.

Greetings from Germany
Pemmican

Adding ed

Guest — Wed, 28 Jan 2004 18:29:37 GMT
Good Morning,
I am an ESL teacher with a question from our grammar lesson today.

Working with the simple past tense of regular verbs today, we encounter this guideline in our book:

For a one-syllable verb ending in consonant + vowel + consonant, double the final consonant and add -ed: stopped.

In the excercise to practice this is the word chew. I don't believe we spell it chewwed; but I was at a loss to explain to my puzzled students why not. Could you please explain this mystery?

Thank you in advance,

A Beginning High Adult School Instructor