-ed has three sounds, and one rule decides which
Walked, played, wanted: the same -ed spelling makes three different sounds — /t/, /d/ and /ɪd/. One physical rule about your voice decides which, every time.
Articles
How English pronunciation really works.
Longer reads from the people behind SayNative — the patterns behind English sounds, stress and spelling, and how to practise them without a teacher.
The English sounds Arabic speakers mix up — and how to fix each one
Parking or barking? Very or ferry? A practical map of the English sounds that don't exist in Arabic, why your mouth substitutes them, and the drills that fix each one.
The English sounds Mandarin speakers mix up — and how to fix each one
Why final consonants vanish, why 'think' becomes 'sink', and why English stress feels like a fifth tone: a practical pronunciation repair guide for Mandarin speakers.
The English sounds Spanish speakers mix up — and how to fix each one
Why 'Spain' grows an extra e, why sheep becomes ship, and why b and v refuse to separate: a practical repair guide to English pronunciation for Spanish speakers.
Cats, dogs, buses: the three sounds of the S ending
The plural -s, the verb -s and the possessive 's all follow one rule: /s/ after voiceless sounds, /z/ after voiced ones, /ɪz/ after hissing sounds. Here's how to feel it.
English rhythm: why natives stretch three words and swallow the rest
English sentences run on beats: content words get stretched, grammar words get crushed. Learn to hear the drumline of sentence stress — and to stop giving every word equal time.
Silent letters: why they exist and where they hide
The k in know, the b in comb, the l in walk: English silent letters aren't random. They're fossils with patterns — and once you know the patterns, they stop ambushing you.
Thirteen or thirty? How to hear and say the number pairs everyone confuses
13/30, 14/40, 15/50: the -teen/-ty pairs cause real-world mistakes with money, times and dates. The difference is stress, a vowel, and an American flap t — all learnable.
Linking: why native speakers seem to eat their words
Native English speakers don't say words one at a time — they link, weaken, and drop sounds between them, which is why fluent speech sounds fast even when it isn't.
Ship or sheep? The vowel pair that changes the word
The difference between /ɪ/ and /iː/ isn't just about holding a vowel longer — it's a different tongue shape, and mixing them up changes the word entirely.
How to practise pronunciation without a teacher
A realistic, teacher-free self-study loop for pronunciation — listen, imitate, record, compare — plus a 15-minute daily plan you can actually keep up.
Word stress matters more than perfect sounds
A slightly off vowel is forgivable, but stress on the wrong syllable can make an otherwise correct word unrecognizable — here's why, and how to fix it.
Schwa: the most common sound in English
Meet /ə/, the quiet, reduced vowel that shows up in almost every English word and quietly makes native speech sound fast and fluid.
Why English spelling doesn't tell you the sound
A short history of why English letters and English sounds parted ways, and what to do about it instead of memorizing more rules.
The flap T: why water sounds like wadder
In General American English, the letter T often turns into a quick D-like tap — here's the rule that explains water, better, and get it.
The two TH sounds, and how to finally say them
English TH is really two different sounds, /θ/ and /ð/, and neither one exists in most other languages — here's how to make both, and why your substitutions happen.