IPA phoneme /d/

In Received Pronunciation and in General American, the IPA phonetic symbol /d/ corresponds to the initial consonant sound in words like "day", and "dream" and the final one in "bad" and "made".

This phoneme is very consistently spelled "d", however the letter "d" is pronounced /t/ in the past tense of verbs: "guessed" /ɡest/.

/d/ is a voiced consonant; its unvoiced counterpart is IPA phoneme /t/. Bettwen vowels /t/ and /d/ may get neutralized as [ɾ]  (a voiced consonant called alveolar flap). Then "butter" may be pronounced [ˈbʌɾər] and "ladder" may be pronounced [ˈlæɾər].

Common words
Some common words which practice the initial pronunciation of /d/ include the following: Some common words which practice the mid-position pronunciation of /d/ include the following: Some common words which practice the final position pronunciation of /d/ include the following:
 * daisy - day - deal - deer - development - different - dinosaur - dolphin - down - dress - duck - during
 * already - body - condition - consider - idea - ladder - model - order - product - study - today - under
 * bad - bed - child - feed - find - God - good - hide - include - mood - need - old - provide - side - wood

Assimilation
/sd/ may be pronounced /st/ in some words: the /d/ is devoiced because /s/ is unvoiced. This happended centuries ago with past tense pronunciation.
 * disdain /dɪsˈdeɪn, dɪˈsteɪn/

/d.d/
Normally double "d" is pronounced as a single /d/ (as in "address" or "middle"). In the following examples two /d/'s are pronounced.


 * headdress - midday

Another example of /d.d/


 * upside-down

Anticipated pronunciation difficulties depending on L1
Preconceived ideas and other interferences from L1 obviously interfere in many cases with how students perceive - and pronounce - sounds/words in English. The following section aims to point out some of the most typical difficulties teachers and students may encounter regarding pronunciation.

Spanish
The main difficulty is the difference between /d/ and /ð/. See IPA phoneme /ð/.