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Refer the section called "Pronunciation Features" in this page. In that section, you can find this sentence "Interestingly, mist and missed are pronounced exactly the same in English". Really? I don't pronounce both of them the same way.

  • Mist - I pronounce this as "mĭst"
  • Missed - I pronounce this as "mĭsd"

Am I wrong? Should I pronounce both of them exactly the same?

leoger
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T2E
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  • Now I'm curious -- what is your native language? – leoger Feb 15 '14 at 02:15
  • @leoger My native language is Tamil. – T2E Feb 15 '14 at 02:16
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    They are not only pronounced identically; until English orthography stabilized in the late 17th century they were often spelled identically: OED reports miste, mist, and myst for both. – StoneyB on hiatus Feb 15 '14 at 03:03
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    I'm unable to even imagine how "misd" could sound, if not exactly the same as "mist". I tried for a while to pronounce "misd" differently but it made the "s" sound like a "z", or the "d" sound like a "der" (as in, "mister"), which certainly did not sound like the word "missed" any more! – Boann Feb 15 '14 at 11:12
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    @Boann - The only way I could make them sound differently was to make them, in effect, two-syllable words, pronounced like miss·tə and miss·də. – J.R. Feb 15 '14 at 11:21
  • In my Hiberno-English these words would have a subtle difference, which one could emphasise for clarity. In missed one actually pronounces the 'd' with a "duh" rather than "tuh". – Sean D Feb 15 '14 at 12:12
  • Yes, I'm from England and I would say both in exactly the same way. – Klors Feb 15 '14 at 12:21
  • In fact it varies throughout the United Kingdom depending on how well the local dialect enunciates the hardness of the final 'ed' compared with the final 't'. In Scotland 'mist' is often 'Dreich', a Gaelic word for a depressing wetness that seeps through to your bones ;-) – Philip Oakley Feb 15 '14 at 15:03
  • @J.R. As Italian that would be the natural way to pronounce them. And that's how in fact I do pronounce them if I speak without much attention on the pronunciation. – Bakuriu Feb 15 '14 at 15:49
  • And from the US (from Chicago, IL), I pronounce them the same. They have such different meanings that I can't imagine one being confused for the other when used in a sentence. – Izkata Feb 15 '14 at 18:37
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    @Izkata - While one being confused with the other may be unlikely for mist and missed, there are other, similar word pairs where it may not always be so clear cut, such as rapt and rapped, bussed and bust, guessed and guest, massed and mast, or blessed and blest. – J.R. Feb 15 '14 at 21:06
  • I found this video very helpful http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7hi-ipU2n0 – T2E Feb 15 '14 at 21:21
  • At least in my mid-western (Ohio) dialect of American English there's no pronunciation difference between these two words. – Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні Oct 01 '14 at 18:02

3 Answers3

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The suffix -ed is typically pronounced in one of three ways:

  • /d/ after voiced sounds other than /d/.
  • /t/ after voiceless sounds other than /t/.
  • /ɪd/ after /t/ or /d/.

The verb miss is pronounced /mɪs/. Since the final sound is the voiceless consonant /s/, the suffix -ed is pronounced /t/. This means that the whole word missed is pronounced /mɪst/.

Coincidentally, the noun mist is also pronounced /mɪst/.

8

In words that end with t or ed, the key is the preceding consonant sound. Some letters blend with the t and d so that the sounds are distinguishable, but some don't.

For example:

  • the f sound causes the -ed to sound like a t: that's why stiffed rhymes with lift
  • the k sound caused the -ed to sound like a t: that's why backed rhymes with fact
  • the p sound caused the -ed to sound like a t: that's why wrapped rhymes with apt
  • the s sound caused the -ed to sound like a t: that's why kissed rhymes with list

However:

  • -ed and t sound different after l, which is why felled and belt do not rhyme
  • -ed and t sound different after r, which is why barred and cart do not rhyme
  • -ed and t sound different after n, which is why panned and rant do not rhyme

These aren't deliberate "rules" that need to be remembered; these are simply ways the sounds come out naturally. (It's worth paying attention to how similarly we pronounce some pairs of consonants, such as b and p, or t and d. Simply pronounce each one three or four times, and pay attention to how similarly your lips and tongue move.)

Some consonants don't figure into this discussion, because there aren't any words that end with sounds like:

  • gt (to compare with, say, hugged)
  • bt (to compare with, say, ribbed)
J.R.
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  • Found this very helpful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7hi-ipU2n0 – T2E Feb 15 '14 at 21:21
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    It may be worth noting that "used" has two different pronunciations depending upon whether it's actually serving as a verb, or as part of an idiomatic expression relating previous behavior. A sentence like "There's the desk I used to study" could have two meanings which would for a native speaker be readily discernible by pronunciation [was had the person previously been studying the desk itself, or utilizing the desk to facilitate the study of other things]? – supercat Oct 01 '14 at 18:26
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It's probably not fair to say you've been doing it "wrong" -- you would be understood by a slightly surprised listener -- but you haven't been doing it right if your goal is to sound native.

In every dialect of English I know, a native speaker would have an almost impossibly hard time even making the sound "mĭsd". (Possibly with the exception of some regions of India.) It took me three minutes of trying and now my neck hurts because I have to really use untrained muscles to stop the air before I turn on my voice to make a 't' into a 'd'.

[Edit] Other answers on this question have done a great job of explaining the rules. I've learned something myself!

leoger
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  • Really? I never know this. Where is the proof? I search missed in many dictionaries, but they show only how to pronounce "miss". I don't see a dictionary which shows the pronunciation of "missed". I don't understand how one can pronounce 't' as 'd'? Is there any other example like? Do you pronounce the 't' in 'mist' and 'ed' in 'missed' as 't' in 'tea'? – T2E Feb 15 '14 at 02:14
  • I don't know if this is "proof", but its some evidence: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/missed#Pronunciation – leoger Feb 15 '14 at 02:21
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    Are you familiar with the idea of "voice" in phonetics? The only difference between /t/ and /d/ is whether your vocal cords are moving. Your tongue and lips are doing the exact same thing, right? So, the reason that something can be written as a 'd' and pronounced as a /t/ is because there is a close relationship between these sounds. As for whether I say it the same as in 'tea', I couldn't tell you because English only has one kind of /t/ sound, so my ear is not used to understanding different kinds of /t/. The difference does exist in Tamil, though. – leoger Feb 15 '14 at 02:24
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    Oh! So I've been pronouncing all of these words 'called', "attacked", "Killed", "Filled", "pulled" wrongly? I pronounce all of these words with the ending sound "d". – T2E Feb 15 '14 at 02:24
  • Well, I just learned that Tamil does not make a distinction between voiced and unvoiced consonants. I don't think I ever knew of a language with such a characteristic, before. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_phonology) – leoger Feb 15 '14 at 02:26
  • How do you the difference does exist in Tamil? Do you know Tamil? Are you Tamilian? – T2E Feb 15 '14 at 02:27
  • I don't know what is mean by voiced and unvoiced consonants. I don't understand it clearly by reading in wiki. I'll go and check some youtube videos to understand it. – T2E Feb 15 '14 at 02:33
  • @T2E, I'm honestly not sure if you've been pronouncing them wrong. You may just think you are pronouncing them wrong. Or, it's possible that you are making two sounds that you can hear the difference between but that most English speakers cannot. This video might help explain voiced/voiceless consonants: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqe_HJVpUv0 – leoger Feb 15 '14 at 02:36
  • let us continue this discussion in chat – leoger Feb 15 '14 at 02:42
  • I checked few videos, and now I understood the difference between voiced and unvoiced consonants. I don't know the term for these, but I'm familiar these. I do pronounce "d" and "t" differently. I pronounce "dog" and "tea" correctly, where "d" is voiced and "t" is unvoiced, but I always pronounced "missed", "called", filled", "pulled" and even "unvoiced" with ending voiced sound of "d". So you are saying all of these words are pronounced with "unvoiced" end sound of "t" or only "missed" is pronounced in that way? – T2E Feb 15 '14 at 02:48
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    Careful here; killed is not a homophone of kilt, nor is felled pronounced the same as felt. The words burned and burnt are not pronounced the same, either. But missed and mist are. The key is the sound before the "t" and "d". Some letters blend with these such that the sounds are distinguishable (like "n", as in panned and pant, or "r", as in card and cart), but some don't (like "s", as in missed and mist, or "f", as in the rhyming stiffed and lift). – J.R. Feb 15 '14 at 03:00
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    @T2E See snailplane's answer for the rules. Called, killed, &c are pronounced with /d/, because /l/ is voiced; attacked and missed are pronounced with /t/ because /k/ and /s/ are voiceless. – StoneyB on hiatus Feb 15 '14 at 03:07
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    @J.R. Okay. But in this situation as a non-native English speaker how I would I differentiate any two words are homophone or not just by looking at the spelling? All of the words I mentioned ends with "ed". There is no grammar rule that a non native English can use to understand? – T2E Feb 15 '14 at 03:08
  • If there are rules, they are not taught to us natives. Simply put, that's just the way the sounds come out naturally, without even thinking about it. We don't TRY to pronounce missed with a t sound at the end; it just comes out that way when we say the word. As others have said, it's hard to hard to pronounce bust and bussed as two different-sounding words. If you can do it, you have quite a talent there. – J.R. Feb 15 '14 at 03:30
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    @J.R. there is a simple rule, namely, the one described in snailplane's answer. The reason it seems natural to you and you didn't have to learn it is that you are a native speaker. It is in fact not easy or natural for all non native speakers to notice and copy this pattern without being explicitly told about it, as is evinced by the fact that OP has been saying it wrong for 11 years without realizing it. – hunter Feb 15 '14 at 12:51
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    For what it's worth, in some ("non-standard") dialects, killed is pronounced "kilt" and called pronounced "calt", and so on. – mattdm Feb 15 '14 at 13:49
  • @hunter - If the O.P. has been saying the two words in a way such that they are distinguishable one from the other, I wouldn't say that the word missed has been pronounced "wrong". If one can enunciate missed so that it sounds like it ends with a d instead of a t, I wouldn't call that an incorrect pronunciation. – J.R. Feb 15 '14 at 15:47
  • @leoger - how do you deal with saying "misdiagnosed"? Do you leave a long gap between mis- and diagnosed? – Daniel Earwicker Feb 15 '14 at 16:54
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    @DanialEarwicker The discussion is about a consonant cluster which closes a syllable. In misdiagnosed this is not the case; the first syllable is closed by the /s/ and the /d/ starts the next syllable. The voicing 'on' the /d/ is therefore implicated in the following vowel /ai/ (or whatever vowel the speaker's dialect employs for this phoneme) and there's no problem. – StoneyB on hiatus Feb 15 '14 at 21:38
  • @StoneyB: Thanks for that! It makes so much sense now. I'll update my answer to reflect some of what has been said on this long chain of comments... – leoger Feb 17 '14 at 03:51
  • @StoneyB: Interesting! The implication is that misd comes out as misduh whereas mist doesn't turn into mistuh. But if I try to make the shortest, most percussive d sound I can, it always has a bit of duh to it, and consequently my pronunciation of misd sounds "good enough" to my (untrained) ears. – Daniel Earwicker Feb 18 '14 at 15:54
  • @DanielEarwicker: There really is NO difference between the /t/ and the /d/ themselves; it's all in the quality of the sounds before and after. A voiced sound before or after the stop extends its voicing slightly to distinguish /d/, but a voiceless sound has no voicing to extend. That's why you never encounter terminal /sd/ in English. – StoneyB on hiatus Feb 18 '14 at 18:26