Lesson 20 – Final Position Consonant Clusters

In comparison to initial position consonant clusters, final position consonant clusters are much more numerous with dozens of possible combinations.

For the linguistic nerds: the large number of final position consonant clusters is in large part due to grammatical inflection in English. For example, where a /t/ or /d/ sound is added to the past tense of a verb, or words have /s/, or /z/ added to the end to become plural or to be made possessive, i.e. ‘-’s’ is added to the end.

Final position consonant clusters can include a sequence of between 2 and 5 consonants in a row.

Let’s go through some examples:

2 Consonant Clusters:

• Gift – /gɪft/
• Wedged – /weʤd/
• Bangs – /bæŋz/
• Lens – /lenz/
• Cops – /kɔps/

3 Consonant Clusters:

• Corrupts – /kəˈɹɐpts/
• Avenged – /əˈvenʤd/
• Inks – / ɪŋks/
• Folds – / fəʉldz/
• Depths – / depθs/

4 Consonant Clusters:

• Texts – /teksts/
• Attempts – /əˈtempts/
• Sculpts – /skɐlpts/
• Angst – /æŋkst/
• Sixths – /sɪksθs/

5 Consonant Clusters:

• Angsts – /æŋksts/

Don’t panic, though. The good news is that the longer the final position consonant cluster, the rarer it is. As you’ll see, there’s only a handful of words with 4 consonants in a row in the final position, and there’s only a single word in English that has 5.

The biggest issue for most English learners with pronouncing final position consonant clusters correctly is that they add in extra vowel sounds, typically the /e/ schwa vowel, and thus extra syllables, where they don’t belong.

The most common example I come across is people miss pronouncing words ending in -ed, because they see the letter E before the D and think it represents a spoken vowel sound.

For instance, they’ll say: ‘wor-ked’ instead of ‘workt’ or ‘war-med’ instead of ‘warmd’.

Usually, it’s not a big issue and English speakers will understand you, but sometimes adding in vowel sounds and extra syllables like this can lead to confusion as other English speakers misinterpret what you’re saying.

For example:

• I warned – /ɑe woːnd/
• I warn Ned – /ɑe woːn‿ned/

• He waves – /hiː wæɪvz/
• He wavers – /hiː ˈwæɪvəz/

Note: remember spelling can lie. There may be a vowel written in the word (usually ‘e’) when actually there’s no vowel there when it’s said aloud.

For example:

• Warned – /woːnd/
• Gives – /gɪvz/
• Polished – /ˈpɔlɪʃt/
• Plates – /plæɪts/

Note: clustering can become even more complex in connected speech when final and initial position clusters are spoken in sequence.

How to learn their pronunciation:

There’s no simple way to learn how to pronounce consonant clusters without just diving in and getting your mouth muscles dirty, that is, doing the work and practicing your pronunciation.

This is precisely what we’re going to do in the following exercises.

Drilling exercises!

The topics below include drilling exercises for each of the pronunciation points you just learnt.

If you want to “drill down” and practice any or all of these pronunciation points, you can do so with these video exercises in order to solidify your pronunciation of these sounds.

If you can already pronounce these sounds with confidence, skip ahead to the next lesson.

But if you still have a little trouble either remembering the rules or making the sounds themselves, complete these exercises on a regular basis until you’ve nailed the pronunciation.

Tip: shorter and more frequent drilling sessions (e.g. 5 minutes per day) are more effective than longer infrequent sessions (e.g. 1 hour per week).