Hello! And welcome to Chat Eng – a podcast where people chat about how they learn and use English. My name is Sam, I’m a CELTA teacher and a performer, and I have a particular interest in pronunciation and expression. In each episode, non-native and native speakers will chat about their experiences with English, share their advice and, at the end, I’ll give some pronunciation tips for you to take away and practice.
So – ready? Let’s get Chat ENG!
This episode, I’m chatting with Jeff. Jeff is English and from Newcastle. Newcastle is in the North East of England, and people from there are called Geordies, just as people from London are called Londoners… so you’ll hear Jeff say the “Geordie accent”.
We met in a café, socially distanced, so you may hear some café sounds! We chatted about the differences in our accents, how we modify the way we speak and the importance of reading … but I started by asking Jeff to tell me a little about himself…
INTERVIEW
Excellent advice from Jeff – read great literature! This might seem a little scary at first but go slowly, page by page, try not to use a dictionary for every new word… soon, you’ll go from understanding the general story to catching all the nuances! Jeff asked a question about the ‘Glottal Stop’. Basically, the glottal stop is when you close your throat quickly to produce a break in the sound – an example of this is ‘uh-oh’.. you hear the break between ‘uh’ and ‘oh’. In English, this can depend on your accent but it shouldn’t change the meaning of a word… There is a great explanation about the glottal stop on the podcast’s webpage:
https://www.thoughtco.com/glottal-stop-phonetics-1690901
So – to this episode’s Pronunciation tip = clear word endings! Let’s focus on past simple regular verbs ending in -ed. When learning English, we learn that the endings of regular verbs in the past simple all use ‘ED’, but what you might not learn is that there are 3 different sounds - / d / - / t / - and / Id /. How do we know which sound is for which verb?
The trick is to identify if the verb ends with a voiced consonant or an unvoiced consonant.
1. First - /d/. Regular verbs like welcome, listen, love, encourage have voiced consonants – we can hear the consonant sound at the end – m – n – v – g . If you can hear the consonant sound, use /d/ in the past simple: welcomed – listened – loved – encouraged.
Try this sentence to practice: I listened to your podcast and I loved it!
2. Next - /t/. Regular verbs like wash – pick – drop – watch have unvoiced consonants – we hear more air than sound at the end – sh – k – p – tch. If you can hear more air, something more percussive, use /t/ in the past simple: washed – picked – dropped – watched.
Try this sentence to practice: I washed my jumper and then I dropped my jumper!
3. Finally – /Id/. Regular verbs like decide – include – visit – taste have either a /d/ sound or a /t/ sound at the end. If you hear a /d/ or a /t/ at the end , use /Id/ in the past tense: decided – included – visited – tasted.
Try this sentence to practice: I visited a new town and decided to eat some local food. It tasted delicious!
Final practice! Try this sentence to practice the 3 differences:
I invited my friend to stay and she stayed for longer than planned because she missed her flight! She thanked me with chocolate!
Over to you to practice!