Hi, Alexander!
Recently you wrote in a message to Dallas Hinton:


 AH> Apart from /w/, your example "wandered" brings up two issues:

 AH> 1) how to pronounce "r" as a medial or final consonant,
 AH>                         and
 AH> 2) how to pronounce "- ed" as a suffix.

 AH> I'd say #1 is highly subject to regional variation. As a Canadian I
 AH> enunciate an "r" wherever I see one in print, but to my ears at
 AH> least the sound is middle-of-the-road and the same applies WRT the
 AH> northwestern US. I once had a neighbour who (although he was quite
 AH> convinced he'd lost his Scottish accent) pronounced my name as if I
 AH> spelled it "Air-r-rdith". OTOH folks from Someplace Else may often
 AH> appear to minimize an "r" or ignore it completely.

What's who I was taught in school. "Car" - sounds like [ka:] In
the USSR we were taught British English.

 AH> What puzzles me
 AH> is how some ex-Brits I know... especially Londoners... add /r/ to
 AH> the end of words where I don't see one,

For example?

 AH> in much the same way USAians say "a couple people" as if they're
 AH> saving the "of" to use in expressions like "a myriad
of" and "off
 AH> of". There are native speakers of English wherever the British
 AH> Empire extended at one time, and folks from Hither & Yon have
 AH> preferences of their own.... :-)

 AH> While #2 is less subject to regional variation it appears to me
 AH> that there are variations based on which consonant sounds native
 AH> speakers can handle without inserting a vowel when these sounds are
 AH> lumped together at the end of a word. Most people simply add a
 AH> final /d/ in words like the following:

 AH>       cleaned, combed, fixed, forked, guessed, longed, managed,
 AH>       muttered, pitied, played, wandered, wondered, yearned.

Ah, I see my word. :)

 AH> All of the examples I've been able to come up with so far in which
 AH> we routinely treat "- ed" as an added syllable involve words ending
 AH> in "t" or "d":

 AH>         counted, courted, painted, mended, sounded, wounded.

I vaguely recollect that I was taught such a thing in school, but I forgot it.



 AH>         * blessed, leaned, learned, spelled

 AH> When these words are used as past participles, you may occasionally
 AH> see or hear "t" (esp. UK?) in place of the "-
ed". Either way is
 AH> correct in Canada.... :-)

I have never heard that "to bless" is a irregular verb:

http://tinyurl.com/ybf7axt3
or
https://www.learning-english-online.net/grammar/tenses-and-verb-forms/irregular-verbs/list-of-all-irregular-verbs/

Bye, Ardith!
Alexander Koryagin
english_tutor 2018

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