"ED" Endings, Part 2 (Adjectives) - Podcast Episode 36


Audio Transcript

Welcome to episode 36 of The English Sessions. ED Endings, Part 2 (Adjectives). I am your host and English teacher, Mike Butler. These podcasts can help you improve your English! Together, we will talk about grammar… pronunciation… structure... and have some fun too. Remember to visit my website, www.englishsessionswithmike.com to contact me for private lessons, and for more content.
You can also read the transcript of this audio  on the website as you listen to this episode.

Listen for this word today:

Pace - ‘to pace’ means to walk back and forth and back and forth. Someone may pace if they are feeling anxious, or annoyed.

In Episode 1 of the English Sessions, we talked about how to pronounce the ‘e’ in the ‘ED’ endings of verbs in English. Do you remember the rule to follow? The ‘e’ should be silent if the verb ends in ED, unless there is a ’t’ or a ‘d’ before the ‘ED’ ending.

Examples of when you would pronounce the ‘e’ then, would be words like ‘started’ and ‘faded’. All other VERB ‘ed’ endings should be silent. Worked. Dropped. Mixed. Paced. You may remember some of these from Episode 1. Let’s practice the pronunciation of these again. I will say some sentences. Repeat after me.

I worked (WURKT) on the project all night. - pause -
I dropped (DROPT) my glass of wine onto the white carpet. - pause -
They mixed (MIKST) two chemicals together, and caused an explosion! - pause -
He paced (PAYST) back and forth, nervously - pause -

Ok, so this is the rule for verbs. Remember, ‘verbs’ are the words for actions in English.

If you remember, from episode 1, adjectives that end in the letters ‘ED’ don’t always follow this rule. They sometimes break this rule. In Episode 1, I gave the example, ‘learned’. Someone who is ‘learned’ has a lot of knowledge in their head. She is a learned woman; she reads a lot of books.

Well, today, I’m going to give you some more examples of adjectives that end in the letters ED that do NOT have silent ‘e’ endings. Remember, the ‘e’ would be silent as a verb, but not as an adjective. The example above, ‘learned’ (LERNED), would be ‘learned’ ‘LERND’ as a verb, for example. She is a learned woman, so she has learned (LERND) many things.

I am going to create a little story. Your challenge is to listen carefully, and find all of the ED ending adjectives in which I am pronouncing the ‘E’ of the ‘ED’. There are 10 of these in my story, total. Let’s see if you can find all 10. Don’t worry if you do not understand some of the words. I will explain the less common ones after the story.

There once was a wicked man, an aged man with crooked teeth. He had ragged clothing, however, he preferred to be naked, so sometimes he wore nothing at all! He lived in a wretched apartment, and in his apartment he kept a bird in a cage. The cage was placed on a three legged table, near a window. However, this was no normal bird. This was a very intelligent bird, a very learned bird, who also had dogged determination to escape from the cage.

One day, the wicked man left the door of the cage open!! Oh, what a blessed day that was for the bird. It also just happened to be a very warm day, so the nearby window was also open. The blessed bird flapped its wings and before long it was free. Free to do whatever it wanted to do! Only minutes after escaping, the bird realized that it had no idea how to survive in the outside world. Where would it get food? Where would it sleep?

Eventually, the bird started thinking about the wicked old man. Sure, he was wicked, but not towards the bird very much. In fact, he was pretty kind towards the bird. In fact, he loved the bird and probably missed it terribly. He gave the bird plenty of food and water, and books to read, because, of course, the bird loved to learn. So, the bird decided to fly right back into that open window, and waited patiently on the legged table for the man.

From that day forward, the man allowed the bird to have complete freedom. He kept the door to the cage open, so the bird could explore the rest of the apartment any time it wanted to, and could go outside any time it wanted to. The bird felt content, and safe, with the weird wicked, aged, naked man.

Did you find all 10? Let’s go through all of them. I will give definitions and synonyms for all of them:

1. Wicked - “the wicked man” - ‘wicked’ means evil, sinful, immoral, bad or sometimes just something that is disagreeable or unpleasant. Sometimes, informally, it can even mean something that is excellent, or wonderful!

2. Aged - “an aged man” - ‘aged’ is just another word for ‘old’.

3. Crooked - “crooked teeth” - ‘crooked’ is the opposite of ‘straight’. Something crooked is bent, or twisted.

4. Ragged - “ragged clothing” - ‘ragged’ typically describes something like clothing, that can become very worn, worn out, torn, ripped, filled with holes. Ragged clothing is old clothing that has been worn many times.

5. Naked… well, that means you are not wearing any clothing!

6. Wretched - “the wretched apartment” - “Wretched” can describe something that is of very poor quality.

7. Legged - “the three legged table” - “Legged” is the word to describe how many legs something has. Once, I saw a three legged dog. 





8. Learned - yes, I used learned. We have already talked about learned.

9. Dogged - ‘dogged determination’ - if you have dogged determination, then you will never give up. You are very very determined to accomplish your goal.

10. Blessed - “a blessed day” - synonyms for ‘blessed’ include:  favored, fortunate, lucky, privileged

After the break, we will listen to the story again. It may be easier to understand the second time.

— BREAK (10:06) —

Now, let’s listen to the story again. Now you know all ten words that end in the letters ED which break the rule that VERB endings must follow. Also, now you know the meanings of these words. So maybe this time, it will be easier to understand. Let’s listen…

— STORY AGAIN (10:30) —

Was the story easier to follow this time? Remember, if these adjectives were VERBS, then you WOULD have a silent ‘e’ ending. Some of these words ARE also verbs, for example, ‘wick’ and ‘age’ and ‘crook’, even ‘dog’. That’s right, ‘dog’ can be a verb in English. It can be an action. Your homework is to learn which of these adjectives are also verbs. Do the verbs have similar meanings to the adjective forms? Record your voice saying these verbs with ED endings, for example, ‘learned’: I learned a lot today from The English Sessions. Send me the recordings. You can leave a voice message for me on the website, and on Anchor.

Make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you won’t miss an episode. Visit www.englishsessionswithmike.com for more content. Please rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave me a message and I will put it on the podcast! Leave me a message at www.englishsessionswithmike.com. Until next time, this is Mike signing off.


Attribution:
 

Alice in Chains self titled album - go check it out!

Unheard_Music_Concepts_-_23_-_23_Wacko

Canary Singing-SoundBible.com-1505722948

Mike Koenig human sounds


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