Tips for Pronunciation

In my Speech Communication 68 class  we learned about the sound of the words, voiced and voiceless consonants, among other things.  Wit this class I  could get better in the pronunciation of some words that we usually use, but we never pay attention on. My teacher taught us that voiceless consonants are P, T, K, F, TH, S, SH, CH. On the other hand, the rest of the consonants are voiced.  Besides this, we learned which part of our mouth use to make the perfect sound.

For example, to pronounce the 'TH' sound, we have to blow air between the top teeth and the flat tongue, so 'Thanks' is not pronounce as 'Tanks', 'Zanks', or 'Zenks'. The blowed air let us pronounce the the word 'Thanks' we want to say. One more thing we learned is that words, such as could, would, and should omitt the 'l' sound, and the 'ou' sounds as a short 'u'.

Finally, the English language has three different endings for the past tense of the words: 'T', 'D', and 'ED'. We only need to follow three rules to know which one to use in each word.

1. If the base word ends in a voiceless consonant (P,K,F,S,SH,CH) except T and TH, the past tense is pronounced as a 'T' sound.  (asked, laughed)

2. If the base word ends in T or D, the past tense is pronounced as a 'ID' sound. (minded, lasted)

3. If the base word ends in a voiced sound, except D, the past tense is pronounced as a 'ID' sound. (followed, changed).