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

ak>  BTW - there are a lot of dictionaries in the Internet
ak>  with audio pronunciation.  IMHO, it would be nice if
ak>  some of the dictionaries could pronounce all the word
ak>  forms.


           Whether or not they make audio available, very few dictionaries seem
 to go into detail about such things.  Fortunately or unfortunately...
depending on one's POV... I find this type of question intriguing.  ;-)



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


 1)  how to pronounce "r" as a medial or final consonant,

                        and

 2)  how to pronounce "-ed" as a suffix.


           I'd say #1 is highly subject to regional variation.  As a Canadian I
 enunciate an "r" wherever I see one in print, but to my ears at least the
sound is middle-of-the-road and the same applies WRT the northwestern US.  I
once had a neighbour who (although he was quite convinced he'd lost his
Scottish accent) pronounced my name as if I spelled it "Air-r-rdith".  OTOH
folks from Someplace Else may often appear to minimize an "r" or ignore it
completely.  What puzzles me is how some ex-Brits I know... especially
Londoners... add /r/ to the end of words where I don't see one, in much the
same way USAians say "a couple people" as if they're saving the "of" to use in
expressions like "a myriad of" and "off of".  There are native speakers of
English wherever the British Empire extended at one time, and folks from Hither
 & Yon have preferences of their own....  :-)


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

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

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

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


                                # # #


In general we use "-ed" to indicate the past participle of a regular verb.  The
 dictionary will spell out irregularities such as "write", "wrote",
"written"... and that may be enough for the average reader.  For the advanced
students here, I'll add a few notes about exceptions which are not so easy to
track down.

            * aged, blessed, beloved, learned, wicked

When these words are used as adjectives "-ed" may (or may not) be treated as an
 added syllable in all of them except "wicked".  WRT "wicked" the omission
would alter the meaning... with the others it doesn't.  FOWLER'S adds a
syllable & so do I.  But I've noticed recently that while the younger reporters
 on TV seem to have eagerly adopted the word "beloved" they don't make this
distinction.  They are not alone.  In poetry & song the "-ed" is often written
with a grave accent (\) over the "e" to indicate that the author wants us to
use an added syllable.

            * blessed, leaned, learned, spelled

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




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)