From: Cynthia S Donnell
To: VOCALIST <vocalist>
Subject: Re: Pronunciation of -ed
Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>

Dear Stephen,
I'm afraid I must disagree with you.
Many diction teachers will offer /Id/ as one of the possible
pronunciations for an "ed" ending.

Samuel Kenyon in his wonderful book _American_Pronunciation_, and Kenyon
and Knott in _A_Pronouncing_Dictionary_of_American_English_ (Merriam),
acknowledge /Id/ as acceptable. If I recall correctly Kenyon prefers it
and it is considered a part of GA (General American) which many of us
teach as American English lyric diction.

Just for the heck of it, have a group of folks say the words "palace,
palate, cabbage" and note the vowel in the final syllable. My experience
is that most folks say palate and cabbage with /I/ as the vowel in the
final syllable. Palace is a toss-up with about half saying the final vowel
as /-at-/. The point I'd like to make is that /I/ is not an uncommon sound
in many final syllables in American English.

As you say, /Ed/ and /-at-d/ are also accpetable. The one thing to remember
is that the final syllable must be totally without stress.

Regards,
Cindy Donnell


On Tue, 1 Feb 2000, Steven Fosdick wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 30, 1999 at 12:39:19PM -0200, CAIO ROSSI DE OLIVEIRA wrote:
> > Dennis , I'm not a expert, not even a native speaker of English,
> > but, applying what is known of Phonetics nowadays, it should be
> > pronounced as /Id/. the /I/ here is the same as in 'is", so it
> > should sound like the -ed in wanted.
> This may be true in Purcell's time but I don't think the example of
> the word 'wanted' is a good one.
>
> I know of no-one who would pronounce 'wanted' as if it were 'wantid'.
> Thinking through what I and other native english speakers I have heard
> say and doing my best to translate to IPA the two possibilties are /E/
> or Schwa for the final vowel sound in the word 'wanted'
>