How to pronounce English words

The -ds ending in words like "words", "hands", and "needs" trips up many English learners because two consonants meet at the end of the word and the second one is not the sound the spelling suggests. The d is fully pronounced and the s is voiced, so the ending sounds like "dz".

The English d is a voiced stop made with the tongue tip on the ridge behind the top teeth. It appears at the start of words like "day", in the middle of words like "ladder", and at the end of words like "bad" and in most -ed endings. The most common problems are turning a final d into t and adding an extra vowel after it.

Regular past tense verbs all end in -ed, but the ending is pronounced three different ways: as a t in "walked", as a d in "played", and as a separate syllable "id" in "wanted". The rule depends on the last sound of the base verb, and once you hear it the pattern is easy to keep.

Plurals, third-person verbs, and possessives all end in -s, but the ending has three sounds: s in "cats", z in "dogs", and a separate syllable "iz" in "buses". The choice depends on the last sound of the base word, and getting it right makes plurals and present-tense verbs clearer to listeners.

English has two th sounds: voiceless as in "think" and voiced as in "this". Both are made with the tongue tip at the teeth, which is unusual among the world’s languages and is why so many learners replace them with t, d, s, or z. The fix is mechanical, and a minute of practice a day makes it automatic.