Some common mistakes we make in pronouncing ending sounds

When we speak English, we often make many mistakes in pronunciation. And this is not a good habit. We should find out our mistakes to correct and beautify our speaking. This article will show you one of the most common mistakes we make in pronunciation. It is “ending sounds”.

First of all, we often make mistakes when we pronounce regular past tense verbs and plural nouns.

The ‘ed’ sound at the end of regular past tense verbs is pronounced in three different sounds ‘t’, ‘d’ or ‘id’. If the verb ends in /t/and /d/, they are pronounced in /id/. If the verb ends in /p/, /f/, /s/, /ts/, /k/, /ʧ/, /∫/, it is pronounced in /t/. And if the verb ends in all other sounds, it is pronounced in/d/.

Similarly, the ‘s’ sound at the end of plural nouns is divided into three sounds ‘s’, ‘z’ and‘iz’. If the word ends in /t/, /p/, /f/, /k/, /ð/, it is pronounced in /s/. If the word ends in /s/, /z/, /∫/, /t∫/, /ʒ/, /dʒ/, it is pronounced in /iz/. And if the word ends in all last sounds, it is pronounced in /z/.

We should obey all those rules when speaking English; however, we do not often pay much intention in them. We pronounces these last sounds carelessly and this lead to the misunderstanding for everyone when they listen to us.

Secondly, we usually pronounces‘s’ too much. We always pronounce ‘s’with any word even its last sound is not‘s’. It is sometimes believed that pronouncing‘s’ after all words modernize our speaking. But it is really a bad opinion.

Unlike the situation of pronouncing ‘s’ in all words too much, many English speakers often forget to speak the ending sounds. For example, the word ‘like’ has the phonetic transcription /laik/. It means when we speak this word, we have to divide it into two parts:‘lai’ and ‘k’. If we forget to pronounce the ending sound, everyone cannot understand clearly what we speak. For instance, there are two words “sad” (/sæd/) and “sat”(/sæt/). The ending sound of “sad” is “d”, but the ending sound of “sat” is “t”. If we do not pronounce “d” and “t”, everybody may misunderstand us.

Sometimes, we find it difficult to hear and pronounce two last sounds: ‘teen’ and ‘ty’ innumbers. People may understand ‘seventy’ when you speak ‘seventeen’; in contrast, people may hear ‘seventeen’ instead of ‘seventy’ when we speak ‘seventy’. Therefore, we should remember a small rule to correctly pronounce these numbers. In numbers ending with ‘teen’, the stress is on the second part of the word. In contrast, in numbers ending in ‘ty’, the stress is on the first part of the word.

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Those are all most common mistakes people often make when we pronounce the last sounds. If you often make some mistakes like those, try to correct them. Before speaking any word, you had better  look up its phonetic transcription in the dictionary  and  practice pronouncing it as much as possible . I believe that  your pronunciation will be improved very quickly . And as a result, your speaking will be very perfect.

Finally, thank you for reading my article and please give me all your comments! Thank you very much!

Have a nice evening. ^^