Learn English – Differentiate between past and present just by pronunciation when word is followed by d- or similiar sound

past-tensepronunciation

How can we distinguish, for example, these two sentences just by listening to the pronunciation?

  1. They first kill the trees.

  2. They first killed the trees.

When pronouncing kill the trees, we have one [d] that is for the. When pronouncing killed the trees, we have two [d] that is for killed and the.

Native speakers pronounce both sentences so that we just hear one [d], so we don't know the tense by pronunciation in these cases. Am I right?

Is there any special stress or extension of a sound that signals the difference between them?

Best Answer

We can distinguish them because they are pronounced differently, and "-ed" is past tense. I don't see what is confusing about this.

Edited to add: I see that I may not have addressed part of your question. You wrote:

Native speakers pronounce both sentences so that we just hear one [d], so we don't know the tense by pronunciation in these cases. Am I right?

The answer is: No, you are not right. I am a native speaker and would never say "killed the" and not pronouce the "-ed". To be sure, "killed" is not prounounced with two syllables, like "kill-ed", but neither is the "d" silent. The "e" is silent, however. The pronunciation goes like this: "killd".

When I reflect upon it, I don't know why the "ed" is silent. With many verbs ending in "-ed" the "e" IS pronounced. Some examples:

  • hated
  • waited
  • extended
  • painted
  • tooted

Examples where the "e" is silent and the final "d" is not:

  • killed
  • tooled
  • pained
  • warred
  • tried

I am sure a linguist could come up with a general rule, but I'm not one of those, so I must defer to an expert. It does seem like verbs whose base ends in "d" or "t" will have pronounced "e" in their "-ed"s.

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