Hi again and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English pronunciation podcast.

My name is Mandy, and this is our 126th episode.

In episode 125, I talked about schwa as an unstressed vowel sound, and I told you that it sounds

very similar to a short U. The short U sounds like a vowel sound in the word sun. Short U and

and shaw sound so similar that a number of dictionaries show them both as an upside-down

letter E. Dictionaries that show them differently use an upside-down V for the short U.

The major concept of our last episode was the dramatic changes of a vowel sound when it

falls on an unstressed syllable.

Our examples compared the letters A and O in both a stressed and an unstressed position.

For instance, if the word proposal were given a strong vowel sound on all of its syllables,

it would be pronounced as proposal.

Listen again, using schwa, proposal. Using strong vowels, proposal. Today I'm going to expand the subject

of unstressed syllables to tell about when the letter E is pronounced as a short I sound.

The short I sounds like I, and is the vowel sound in the word sit.

I, sit.

The letter E being pronounced as a short I can be demonstrated very quickly by listening

to the E-D ending.

When the E-D ending follows a T sound or a D sound, the E-D is pronounced as a short I sound followed

by a d sound.

Not surprisingly, the e-D ending is never stressed.

Listen to the short I sound, i in the ED ending of the following words.

Added. Funded. Listed. Consulted. Now let's expand to a more difficult topic

...