1. Prefixes : im-, in-, il-, ir-, mean “not.”
We use “il-“ before words starting with letter “l”
legal – illegal literate – illiterate
We use “ir-“ before words starting with letter “r”
rational – irrational responsible - irresponsible
We use “im-“ before words starting with “m”, “p” and “b”
balance – imbalance mature – immature perfect – imperfect
possible - impossible
We use “in-“ before all other letters.
compatible – incompatible complete – incomplete decent – indecent
glorious – inglorious gratitude – ingratitude sane - insane
tolerant – intolerant variable – invariable
2. The use of the plural -s has three different ways of pronunciation.
a. The plural sounds like /s/ for words like bat, book, cough, and ship.
bat /t/ - voiceless, alveolar, stop
book /k/ - voiceless, velar, stop
cough /f/ - voiceless, labiodental, fricative
ship /p/ - voiceless, bilabial, stop
All of those words finish with a voiceless phoneme, so we pronounce plural sounds of those words with /s/ which is also voiceless. That makes the pronunciation easier.
b. However, it sounds like /z/ for words like cab, cave, lad, rag, and thing.
cab /b/ - voiced, bilabial, stop
cave /v/ - voiced, labiodental, fricative
lad /d/ - voiced, alveolar, stop
rag /g/ - voiced, velar, stop
thing /ŋ/ - voiced, velar, nasal
All of those words finish with a voiced phoneme, so we pronounce plural sounds of those words with /z/ which is also voiced. That makes the pronunciation easier.
c. And the plural sounds like /ez/ for words like bus, bush, church, judge, and maze.
bus /s/ - voiceless, alveolar, fricative
bush / ʃ/ - voiceless, palatal, fricative
church /t ʃ/ - voiceless, palatal, affricate
judge /d ʒ/ - voiced, palatal, affricate
maze /z/ - voiced, alveolar, fricative
All those sounds are impossible to pronounce if we add to them /s/ at the end to make them plural. That is why we add a short vowel, the schwa /ə/, in order to make it easier to pronounce. That causes that we pronounce their plural form ending as /əz/.
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