Pronunciation of "delivered yesterday", why "ed" not pronounced?

Question

In this video, there is this sentence at 2:18:

Your parcel should've been delivered yesterday.

I have listened to this sentence many times, it seems that the "ed" after delivered is not pronounced, what is this rule("ed" not pronounced) in English pronunciation?

I can clearly hear delivered. There is no rule about 'not pronouncing' the final 'd'. — Kate Bunting, Jul 05 '22 at 09:22
Incidentally, as I've already said twice this morning, don't expect English spelling to represent English pronunciation. English learners have to learn the pronunciations and the spellings separately, because there are no consistent rules. — John Lawler, Jul 05 '22 at 15:36
Are there any pairs of words like beloved and belovèd, learned and learnèd, that ...? might be helpful. It might even be a duplicate, but DialFrost's answer here brings out a salient point. — Edwin Ashworth, Jul 05 '22 at 18:22

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 05 '22 at 04:57

Actually, he did pronounce out the "ed", it was just that he was reading it a bit quickly so it is easy to miss.

According to Guinlist - mishearing of english:

The -ed ending could also fail to be heard as a result of the fact that it involves a “plosive” consonant (/d/ or /t/). Such consonants are often only half pronounced at the end of a word. They are pronounced most clearly when the next word begins with a vowel (e.g. dropped out, removed everything), and they are especially likely to be reduced before another (different) plosive (e.g. passed behind, argued convincingly) or at the end of a sentence.

Pronunciation of "delivered yesterday", why "ed" not pronounced?

1 Answers1