# pronunciation: voiced and voiceless sounds [English]



## nguyen dung

How can we make vocal cord vibarate and not vibrate.We can make glottis stop or open or make vocal cords closer or wider each other.Is that correct that we stop glottis before voiceless sounds then immediately release the stop when we make the sounds.And we make a stop or nearly stop the glottis immediately after the making voiced sounds?


----------



## dojibear

I have no idea about the physics or muscles. Does Vietnamese not have both voiced and voiceless consonants? I assume these are created the same way in every language. Of course all vowels are voiced.


----------



## nguyen dung

I sometime confuse in hearing p,b;f,v in English.In Vietnamese they are distinguished by strong-weak air flow(in practice) but in English sometime p and f are still weak in air flow.


----------



## berndf

The distinction between /p/ and /b/ in English depends on the dialect. Some, in particular British standard (called as RP) pronunciation very reliably distinguishes the two by aspiration (what you call "strong air flow") with the sole exception of /sp-/, which is always non-aspirated as in all other Germanic languages. In American English it is more complicated.

As to /f/ and /v/, can you give examples where you mishear them? There is some allophonic voicing of /f/ in unstressed syllables, so you might hear it correctly. Also, there are some words where this voicing is phonemicised, as in _of_ (with [v]) vs. _off_ (with [f]).


----------



## nguyen dung

I can't remember which word but somtime  I hear p as b when they say weak p and f as v when they say weak f.


----------



## berndf

nguyen dung said:


> I can't remember which word but somtime  I hear p as b when they say weak p and f as v when they say weak f.


I am not quite sure what you identify as "strong" or "weak". A guess: do you perhaps regard the /p/ in _*p*encil_ as "strong" and in _o*p*eration_ as "weak? Or the /f/ in _a*ff*ord_ as "strong" and the /f/ in _ele*ph*ant_ as "weak"?


----------



## nguyen dung

May be that p and f in stress vs unstress syllables.


----------



## berndf

nguyen dung said:


> May be that p and f in stress vs unstress syllables.


That's what I think you respond to.

You might find this video interesting: 



/v/ and /f/ are treated between time codes 38:45 and 40:20. Note that this is British English and some of her sounds may sound strange to an American. She has a good deal of final devoicing, i.e. her /v/ at the end of a words gets very close to /f/.


----------



## nguyen dung

I like to know the distinguish between p,b;f,v... by some signals,e.g it may be by stop then open the glottis or by narrower or opener the glottis(to and not to make vibration(?)) or by stop the glottis after or before the release phase.It seem that in weak voiceless stop consonants there are not aspiration(?).


----------



## berndf

I think you know what "voicing" means. Your language has enough voiced sounds. In sustainable sounds like /f/ and /v/ it is very elementary. In stops it is more complex. It has basically to do with timing there. So, first concentrate on sustainables, i.e. /f/ and /v/, before discussing stops (see the video above).


----------



## dojibear

Just an added comment, not a reason not to figure out pronunciation details:

Perhaps even fluent English speakers can't always tell when they are hearing "f" or "v", or when they are hearing "p" or "b". Why? We usually don't need to. Because we are fluent, we know a huge number of words:

We know there is a word "favour" (fei-vour) but we know there are no words pronounced fei-four, vei-vour, vei-four.
We know there is a word "pebble" (peh-bull) but we know there are no words pronounced beh-bull, peh-pull, beh-pull.
We know there is a word "people" (pee-pull) but we know there are no words pronounced pee-bull, bee-bull, bee-pull.

Even worse, English speakers may be careless because of this. The don't have to clearly pronounce the sounds different, because they will not be misunderstood.



nguyen dung said:


> I like to know the distinguish between p,b;f,v... by some signals,e.g by stop then open the glottis or by narrower or opener the glottis(to and not to make vibration(?)) or by stop the glottis after or before the release phase.It seem that in weak voiceless stop consonants there are not aspiration(?).



I think you are thinking in the right direction: there may be signals that English speakers notice (without thinking) that help them distinguish the voiced and unvoiced consonants. These signals are clearly different in English and Vietnamese, two languages that sound very different.

The only example I can think of is a 't' at word end (discussed in other threads), that often makes no sound by itself, but causes the vowel before it to be cut off (spoken more briefly).

"bent" sounds like "ben" with a shorter 'e'.
"can't" sounds like "can" with a shorter 'a'.


----------



## berndf

dojibear said:


> Perhaps even fluent English speakers can't always tell when they are hearing "f" or "v", or when they are hearing "p" or "b". Why? We usually don't need to. Because we are fluent, we know a huge number of words:
> 
> We know there is a word "favour" (fei-vour) but we know there are no words pronounced fei-four, vei-vour, vei-four.
> We know there is a word "pebble" (peh-bull) but we know there are no words pronounced beh-bull, peh-pull, beh-pull.
> We know there is a word "people" (pee-pull) but we know there are no words pronounced pee-bull, bee-bull, bee-pull.


It can get tricky, though, even within English. I have learned my English in Britain. I once watched an American TV show and in a sentence I heard the word _aberration_, which made no sense in the context. Even though I know the BrE and AmE differences in theory I couldn't figure out what he really said. Only after downloading sub titles from the internet I found out that he said _operation_. The unrounding of the o in AmE and the lack of aspiration of p in an unstressed syllable set me on the wrong track.


----------



## nguyen dung

Is there any case in which the voiceless consonant is voicelizated?


----------



## berndf

It can happen between sonorants. An example is _e*x*it_.


----------



## nguyen dung

I just have read a book (at the time of this saying)which says that to make voiceless sounds we must take the vocal cords apart as in breath.And to make voiced sounds we must narrower glottis.


----------



## berndf

I really don't understand your problem. You must know how to do voicing. You have vowels in your language and they are voiced.

If you want to produce a [v] just say _aaaaaaaaaaaaaa_ an *while* doing so, move your lower lip up to touch your upper teeth. That is really all there is to it.


----------



## nguyen dung

But we still have to know how to make voiceless!


----------



## berndf

There is a voiceless /f/ in your language. So you don't really have to learn it. The answer is simple: place your lower lip to firmly touch your upper teeth and blow.


----------



## nguyen dung

But it seem that sometime making f the lower lip do not firmly touch(weak f) so may be confused with v?


----------



## berndf

The approximant f [ʋ̥] is not a sound normally occurring in the major varieties of English. If it does it is careless speech. But since the only phonemically relevant distinction here is between /f/ and /v/ (and of course /f/ and /θ/, which merge in some dialect, but that is another story), i.e. voicing, the difference between [f] ans [ʋ̥] doesn't really matter.

A side note: In early development stages of English (up to the 12th century) even the difference between [f] and [v] did not matter and the phoneme /f/ was pronounced [f] in some contexts and [v] in others. We can see this in word pairs like singular _wife_ and plural _wives_ still today. But in modern English the difference between /f/ and /v/ does matter.


----------



## dojibear

nguyen dung said:


> But we still have to know how to make voiceless!



You go first: you tell us all the details of how you make voiceless and voiced sounds in Vietnamese. Then we will tell you if it is the same in English.

My point is: you already know how. So do several other billion people. And none of them needed a detailed text explanation of what happened in the throat, to learn how. Neither do you.

Unless someone in this forum is an MD who has researched speech production, no-one in this forum knows the information you are asking (what tenses? what relaxes? what shapes change in the throat?). Who studies that? No-one.


----------



## nguyen dung

Thank you very much for your kind guidance.


----------

