Past Tense pronunciation

[Guardian71]

Dear Teachers of the World,

I started teaching not long ago and have, in my research into Phonetics, came across the rules of pronouncing verbs in the past tense. From what I understand, we only pronounce the 'ed' in verbs ending with /t/ and /d/ sounds such as; want - wanted, generate - generated, detect - detected, etc.

Otherwise, we do not (like prepared, ignored, etc.)

What about the word crooked? The word crook does not end with a /t/ or /d/ sound, yet we give it the additional sound of /id/ in crooked.

Please advise. Thank you.

Guardian71

[orangutan]

That is because it is not really a past tense but an old-fashioned participle (in effect, an adjective). Similarly with naked, learned (as in "learned man"), and a number of others.

[grammarfreak]

The pronounciation for some regular verbs endind in k and s (like, cook, look, express, guess, etc.) has a t sound in the past tense