Leadership and Famous People
Senior 4 · English
Leadership and Famous People
Lesson 3 of 5
25 min
Let's begin
Listen to these two sentences: "They win every match." "They won every match." In writing, the difference jumps off the page. In speech, it is one vowel: /ɪ/ or /ʌ/. The same is true of run and ran, sit and sat, lead and led. English irregular verbs often make the past by changing a vowel, so a speaker who blurs vowels blurs time itself. This lesson revises the simple past, the tense of every biography, and trains your ear and mouth on the vowel pairs that carry it.
Written by Ganzaa from the facts in Wikipedia's article on Nelson Mandela. Regular simple past verbs are underlined; irregular ones are in bold.
Nelson Mandela (1918–2013)
Nelson Mandela was born on 18 July 1918 in Mvezo, in South Africa's Eastern Cape. He studied law at the universities of Fort Hare and the Witwatersrand and became a lawyer in Johannesburg. In 1943 he joined the African National Congress (ANC), and the next year he helped to found its Youth League. He opposed apartheid, the system that separated South Africans by race and gave power to whites alone. At first he led peaceful protests, but in 1961 he helped to start an armed wing of the ANC. He was arrested in 1962 and later sentenced to life imprisonment.
Mandela spent 27 years in prison. He refused an offer of release that required him to give up the armed struggle, and he finally came out on 11 February 1990. He did not seek revenge. In 1993 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with President F. W. de Klerk, and in 1994 he led the ANC to victory in South Africa's first fully democratic election and became the country's first black president. He stepped down in 1999, after one term, and died on 5 December 2013.
| Use | Example |
|---|---|
| A finished action at a stated past time | In 1943 he joined the ANC. |
| A sequence of events in order | He came out of prison, shared the Nobel Prize and won the election. |
| A finished period | He spent 27 years in prison. |
| Negatives and questions: did + base verb | He did not seek revenge. When did he become president? |
Regular verbs: spelling. Add -ed (join → joined); after -e, add -d (refuse → refused); consonant + y becomes -ied (study → studied, but play → played); double the final consonant after one stressed short vowel (step → stepped, plan → planned). British English also doubles final l: travel → travelled. You learned to pronounce -ed as /t/, /d/ or /ɪd/ in Unit 3.
| Vowel change | Base → past (→ past participle) |
|---|---|
| /ɪ/ → /æ/ (→ /ʌ/) | sit → sat · begin → began → begun · swim → swam → swum · sing → sang → sung · drink → drank → drunk |
| /ʌ/ → /æ/ (→ /ʌ/) | run → ran → run |
| /ɪ/ → /ʌ/ | win → won · dig → dug · stick → stuck |
| /iː/ → /e/ | lead → led · feed → fed · meet → met · read → read · keep → kept · leave → left · mean → meant |
| /e/ → /ɒ/ | get → got · forget → forgot |
| /ʌ/ → /eɪ/ | come → came · become → became |
| /aɪ/ → /əʊ/ | ride → rode · write → wrote · rise → rose · drive → drove |
| /eɪ/ → /ʊ/ | take → took · shake → shook |
Notice: in the first row, the past simple has /æ/ and the past participle has /ʌ/. She began /bɪˈɡæn/ the campaign in 2002, but She has begun /bɪˈɡʌn/ a new one. Only the vowel tells them apart.
A minimal pair is two words that differ in only one sound. In Unit 4 you practised long and short pairs such as heel and hill. These pairs differ in the quality of the vowel, where the tongue is, rather than its length.
| Pair | How to make the difference | Minimal pairs |
|---|---|---|
| /ɪ/ – /e/ | /e/: drop your jaw a little from /ɪ/ | sit / set · bit / bet · lift / left · fill / fell · win / when |
| /e/ – /æ/ | /æ/: drop your jaw further, spread your lips | men / man · bed / bad · set / sat · said / sad · led / lad |
| /æ/ – /ʌ/ | /ʌ/: tongue back to the centre, jaw a little higher, lips relaxed | ran / run · cap / cup · hat / hut · bag / bug · began / begun |
| /ʌ/ – /ɒ/ | /ɒ/: tongue right back, lips slightly rounded | cut / cot · luck / lock · duck / dock · shut / shot |
| /iː/ – /e/ | /iː/: smile and hold; /e/: relax, drop the jaw, shorter | lead / led · feed / fed · read (present) / read (past) · meet / met |
Worked example 1: writing a life in the simple past
Notes from Lesson 1: Adrien Niyonshuti · born 1987, Rwamagana · 2009 rides in European professional peloton, the first Rwandan · 2012 London Olympics, carries the flag · 2013 opens cycling academy in Rwamagana.
Worked example 2: is it present or past? Listen for the vowel
A radio presenter says: "The Amavubi /rʌn/ out of time, but they /wʌn/ the respect of the crowd."
Warning
Tip
Jaw down, past tense. For many vowel-change verbs, the jaw drops for the past: sit → sat, lead → led, begin → began. Put a finger on your chin and feel it drop. For win → won and run → ran, feel the tongue slide instead.
Stop confusing /æ/, /ʌ/ and /ɑː/, Lean English Pronunciation (about 7 minutes, 2023). Repeat each word after the teacher, then add ran, run, began and begun to the right columns.
Practice
Key points
Sources and credits
Quick check
Which sentence is correct?
