Edo election: A common error in the pronunciation of voted, counted, collated etc.

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As Edo State elected its next governor on Saturday, some words naturally became recurrent as people discussed the poll. Among such are vote/voted, count/counted, collate/collated. Another term that often sparks a grammatical blunder – cast – also resurfaced. It is an irregular verb that, in most circumstances, does not take -ed when in the past tense form, yet some people say they ‘casted’ or have ‘casted’ their votes instead of they ‘have cast’ it.

Voted, counted, and collated are popular words. Even an averagely educated person knows that their past tense forms are voted, counted, and collated respectively. What many do not, however, realise is that their pronunciations follow a peculiar pattern. Instead of saying votED, for instance, you should say votID, by pronouncing the ‘e’ in ‘voted’ as the one in ‘depart’ instead of as the one in ‘sell’.

Pronouncing words that end with -ed.

It is not all words that end with letters ‘ed’ that its final sound comes out as -ED when pronounced. As a matter of fact, they can be categorised into three according to their spellings, which means that there are three ways of saying them. This is why although voted, asked and prayed are all regular verbs in the past tense form, the -ed in each is pronounced differently.

First Category: Halted: haltID

First category: The past tense marker (ed) should sound like ‘id’ if the present tense form (base word) ends in t/te, d:

Halt – halted (past tense): haltID (pronunciation)

Wait – waited: waitID

Vote – voted: votID

Count – counted: countID

Mend – mended: mendID

Raid – raided: raidID

Blend – blended: blendID

Second category: Task – tasked: taskT

Pronounce as T if the word ends in k, s, ch, sh, p and f(gh):

Task – tasked (past tense): taskT (pronunciation)