Hello, My name is Sarah Lobegeiger de Rodriguez and I'm the chief speech pathologist at Voice
Science, Melbourne's premiere Accent Reduction, Voice, Stuttering, Elocution and Communication
consultancy located on Collins St in the Melbourne Central Business District. Today I want to
share a quick tip. This tip will empower your pronunciation of really important grammar
markers. So what is a grammar marker? A grammar marker is basically an addition that we add
to a word that ensures that our listener receives that grammar features or the tense of the
given word. So the grammar marker I want to work on today is very specific and very precise
and I think many of you who are looking at improving your English speaking and pronunciation
might find this tip helpful. So we're dealing with Simple Past Tense and for this marker
we need to add the letters "__ed" when we write it but when we pronounce it we are doing
many different things. So let's zoom right in to one instance and one sound combo we
have to achieve to convey our grammatical intent correctly. The target is words or verbs
I should say that end with /ʃ/ like "wash" "crash" "bash" and so on. Now when we put
the past tense with the "__ed" because these verbs are regular we need to add "washed"
/ʃt/. Now this can be really hard to achieve because /ʃ/ is a fricative which means the
sound needs to be long and sustained with airflow and pressure and /t/ is a plosive
which means the sound needs to be released precisely, promptly with sufficient air pressure.
So we have the combination of a long sound /ʃ/ followed by the immediate insertion of
a short sound /t/. Let's try it together. /ʃt/ /ʃt/ "washed" "crashed" "bashed" running
out of ideas. Any word that ends with "__sh" that is a verb that follows a regular tense
form will require this combination. So this was just a very quick drill to outline a few
ideas to incorporate past tense accurately. It's so essential that the past tense markers
come across. If you drop them off listeners could mistake you for not understanding grammar.
I know that you would be inclined to write "__ed" as required to show the past tense
but if the pronunciation precision deteriorates on the combination of /ʃt/ the listener will
receive the incorrect tense and the grammar error can really stand out. So what I recommend
is look out for verbs that end in /ʃ/, make sure that you've got the precision and speed
to combine /ʃt/ to show your past tense. That's it for now, have a wonderful day. If
you liked this video, don't forget to give it a thumbs up below, feel free to share it
and if you are not already subscribed to our channel- WELCOME! Be sure to subscribe if
you found this video helpful. My name is Sarah Lobegeiger de Rodriguez, Chief speech pathologist
at Voice Science™. We work with internationals to advocate for communication precision, confidence
and assertiveness. If you've got any questions about our services be sure to head to our
website, there you can check out our diagnostic accent and communication assessment. The first
step to tightening up your pronunciation precision and communication accuracy for English. Have
a great day! Ciao!