In this lesson, I talk about voiced and voiceless sounds and how they determine the use of 's', 'z', 'd' and 't' ending sounds.

1. Your Phonetics
Coach
Joseph Wong
Lesson
5
1

2. 2
Voiced and voiceless
words
In simple terms, a voiced word is one where your vocal
cords vibrate when you say it and a voiceless word is
one where the vocal cord does not vibrate.
Hold your vocal cord (picture)
and say the word “please”
/pl z/ and you will feel it
vibrate. So “please” is voiced.
iː
Do the same and say the word “put” /p t/ and you will
not feel any vibration. So “put” is voiceless.
ʊ

3. 3
Why is it important to
know if words are
voiced or voiceless?

4. 4
Use of ‘s’ and ‘z’ in voiced
and voiceless words
Voiced words end with the
‘z’ sound
Voiceless words end with the
‘s’ sound
please /pl z/ bass /b s/ or /b s/
choose / z/ six /s ks/
those / z/ loss /l s/
phase /f z/ hoax /h ks/
beans /b nz/
raise /r z/
iː
uːtʃ
əʊ
eɪ
iː
eɪ
eɪ æ
ɪ
ɒ
əʊ

5. 5
Use of ‘s’ and ‘z’ in voiced
and voiceless words
f kpsVoiceless
Sounds
Voiced (ending) Voiceless (ending)
Chimed (d sound) Clapped (t sound)
Drained (d sound) Fetched (t sound)
Flamed (d sound) Pricked (t sound)
Gauged (d sound) Whacked (t sound)
tʃʃT
Verbs that are spelt ending with these (above)
alphabets, the past tense (‘ed’) of these verbs is
pronounced with the ‘t’ sound, not ‘d’.