Traditionally, the past tense of verbs is spelt '-ed', regardless of whether the sound is -ed, -d or -t. For example: hated (-ed sound); robbed (-d sound); jumped (-t sound). Yet there are some cases where -t is used in the spelling - as in slept, sent. These are mainly 'irregular' words, where the form of the word has been changed in forming the past tense. This is all very confusing for children learning to spell.
Where the past tense is formed just by adding -d or -t, the two cases can be easily differentiated by the rule that a -d sound is used when the previous sound is voiced, and -t when the previous sound is unvoiced (that is, when the previous sound is p, c, f, s or soft 'th'.
So e-speec achieves clarification and simplification by spelling the endings
as they sound. But
note that -d changes to -ed, and -t changes to -et, if the preceding vowel is long (but not if it is 'ee'). For
example: shouted, hated, torct (talked), senst (sensed), slept, jumpt (jumped), slipt (slipped),
hopt (hopped), hopet (hoped), coft (coughed), parst (passed), uzed (used), bacet (baked), faset (faced),
chanjed (changed), leend (leaned).
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