When To Voice the "E" in Past Tense -ED?

When Do You Skip Over the /e/ In -ED and When Do You Voice It?

In English, to spell the past tense of verbs, you add an ending "ED" after the word - in most cases. There are irregular ones such as:

See > Saw

Go > Went

Sit > Sat 

But these are not what we're concerned with here. The ones I'm referring to are just the "regular" verbs and their past tense spellings where you simply add "ED" to make it so. For example:

Hop > Hopped

Jump > Jumped

Hammer > Hammered

Play > Played

Pad > Padded

Add > Added

Subtract > Subtracted

Start > Started

Looking at the few past tense -ED examples above, do you notice something strange in these words?

Let's compare how a few of these words are pronounced (pay attention to how the ending ED sounds):

Hopped vs. AddEd

Jumped vs. SubtractEd

Hammered vs. PaddEd

Played vs. StartEd

Do you notice how the ending ED is voiced differently in these words? In some words the E in the ending -ED is completely skipped over, while in other words the E is voiced. Why is that?

Why is the E skipped over in "hopped" to make it sound like:
/h/ /o/ /p/ /d/

But in "added", the E is voiced to make it sound like:
/a/ /d/ /e/ /d/?

Why is the E skipped over in "played" to make it sound like:
/p/ /l/ /ay/ /d/

But in "started", the E is voiced to make it sound like:
/s/ /t/ /ar/ /t/ /e/ /d/?

One Simple Rule to Learn for Voicing the /e/ in Past Tense -ED

I get asked this question quite often, so I thought I'd share with you the simple rule to learn that will let you know why the E in -ED is voiced sometimes, and why it is skipped over other times. So the simple rule goes like this:

When the past tense ED follows a D or a T, the E is voiced. In all other cases, the E is skipped over.

So applying this rule to the words above, we can now see why the E is skipped over in some words, and voiced in others:

E is skipped over - not following a D or a T

Hop > Hopped

Jump > Jumped

Hammer > Hammered

Play > Played

E is voiced - follows a D or a T

Pad > Padded

Add > Added

Subtract > Subtracted

Start > Started

There you have it! Now you know when you should skip over an E in past tense ED and when you need to voice it.

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