# Aspiration of voiceless plosives /k, p, t/ [pronunciation]



## Henrik Larsson

Hi, I'd like to know if in the words "ask", "crisp" and "vast", the final k, p and t are aspirated or not. I'm testing if at the end of word, the sequence s + stop, implies that the stop is aspirated.

Thanks in advance


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## zapateado

Yes, they are aspirated when spoken clearly by a native speaker of proper AE, and, I assume, BE.


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## Youngfun

Hi all,

I have a question about the aspiration of the voiceless plosives /k, p, t/.
Because in Chinese (all dialects) the aspiration of consonants is distinctive, when learning English in China, my teacher also taught me when to aspire them, when not to.
Now on Wikipedia I found a paragraph more precise about this:



> Englishvoicelessplosives are aspirated for most native speakers when they are word-initial or begin a stressed syllable, as in _pen, ten, Ken. They are unaspirated for almost all speakers when immediately following word-initial s, as in spun, stun, skunk. After an s elsewhere in a word they are normally unaspirated as well, except when the cluster is heteromorphemic and the plosive belongs to an unbound morpheme; compare dis[t]end vs. dis[tʰ]aste. Word-final voiceless plosives optionally aspirate._



Do you agree with Wikipedia? How do y'all pronounce them?
My teacher insisted that these consonants should not be aspirated after an 's', and so I don't.
But I don't understand the difference _dis[t]end vs. dis[tʰ]aste. _
Why? Because _dis[tʰ]aste_ is a compound of dis+taste, thus it preserves the aspirated 't' of _[tʰ]aste?
_Do y'all also make this difference?

And what about finals? As I understood most British and American speaker would make an 'inaudible realisation' (not sure about the fonetic term) when finals, especially in casual speech. Is it true?
It's been discussed also in the thread Word-final consonants (and clusters): 'sport' > 'sportɐ' pronunciation
But somebody else in the forum (don't remember which thread) said that (s)he does aspirates the finals in casual/slow/enphatic speech.
I also remember that in the program 'Tell me more' that teaches American English, the speakers do pronounce slightly-aspirated 't', but not aspirated as much as initial t's.

While when I was doing the PET (Cambridge ESOL Exams), I can hear the speakers in recording pronounce strongly aspirated final t's.
Such as the word 'test' pronounced _[tʰ]es__[tʰ], _with the two t's equally strongly aspirated.
Maybe is it a feature of Cambridge accent?
What about other accents? (from UK, US, but other countries too)

The Wikipedia article also doesn't explain whether to aspire or not the consonants in non-stressed syllable, or in syllable coda, or when there is a _liaison_ between a final consonant and an initial vowel, such as 'no*t* *a*t all'.
Maybe this varies greatly between accents?

<< This thread has been merged with a brief previous thread. Please read from the top and respond to the more recent question. >>


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## berndf

Youngfun said:


> Do you agree with Wikipedia? How do y'all pronounce them?
> My teacher insisted that these consonants should not be aspirated after an 's', and so I don't.


That is correct, provided /s/ and /t/ occur at the syllable onset. Theoretical /sp-/ and /sb-/, /st-/ and /sd-/ and /sk-/ and /sg-/ would be indistinguishable. Practically, the is no problem as /sb/, /sd-/ and /sg-/ onsets don't exist in native words. 


Youngfun said:


> But I don't understand the difference _dis[t]end vs. dis[tʰ]aste. _


Different syllable structure: _di-stend_ vs. _dis-taste_.


Youngfun said:


> While when I was doing the PET (Cambridge ESOL Exams), I can hear the speakers in recording pronounce strongly aspirated final t's.
> Such as the word 'test' pronounced _[tʰ]es__[tʰ], _with the two t's equally strongly aspirated.
> Maybe is it a feature of Cambridge accent?


This is standard in RP (British standard) English.


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## wandle

This aspiration is something quite unsuspected by most native English speakers, even well-educated ones. We do it without realising it. I first came up against it in learning French and Greek. In regard to the two points below: I would agree with berndf on (b): standard RP. (However, when I say 'taste' to myself in a Liverpool accent, I don't seem to hear the first 't' aspirated.)
On point (a), though, I'm inclined to agree with Youngfun. (But the more I say 'distend' to myself, the more I suspect I'm aspirating the 't').

(a)





Youngfun said:


> But I don't understand the difference _dis[t]end vs. dis[tʰ]aste. _
> Why? Because _dis[tʰ]aste_ is a compound of dis+taste, thus it preserves the aspirated 't' of _[tʰ]aste?_





berndf said:


> Different syllable structure: _di-stend_ vs. _dis-taste_.


(b)





Youngfun said:


> Such as the word 'test' pronounced _[tʰ]es__[tʰ], _with the two t's equally strongly aspirated.
> Maybe is it a feature of Cambridge accent?





berndf said:


> This is standard in RP (British standard) English.


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## natkretep

On stops in the coda position of a syllable, there will be differences between different accents, contexts and situation, so we might not be able to talk about BE and AE as if each is homogeneous.

You are more likely to get clear aspiration in careful speech (such as in the exam mentioned in post 3). If I said, 'I took the test five days ago' in a casual fashion, I think the final /t/ in _test_ not only loses the aspiration, it is likely to disappear altogether! If I said it carefully, yes I'd produce an aspirated /t/. There are also speakers where /t/ in final position becomes a glottal stop.

If the following sound is a vowel, I'm also much more likely to aspirate the final stops (whether speaking casually or carefully). So if I said, 'There's a test on Tuesday' (as opposed to my earlier sentence), the aspirated /t/ is almost always there.


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## berndf

wandle said:


> But the more I say 'distend' to myself, the more I suspect I'm aspirating the 't'


I've looked at a few samples of this word in a wave analyser. It seems, RP speakers use aspiration with the "t" in "distend", though a very short one. You can listen to one on www.forvo.com, search for "distend" and listen to the pronunciation by "TopQuark". His VOT of the "t" is 22ms. For reference, the same speaker's pronunciation of "stylise" has a VOT of exactly 0.

There is also a sample of "distend" on forvo recorded by an AE speaker. His VOT is 0.


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## Youngfun

Thank you everyone for the answers!
They've been very useful.
It's intersting to note that even distend is lightly aspirated by Brits.
And "at all" is aspirated for British/Singaporeans.
And there are some dialects (Liverpool) who don't aspirate initial t's! I thought all British dialects did it. 

What about t's in non-stressed syllable?
For example letter, better, water, activity, etc.?


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## agl126

Youngfun said:


> Thank you everyone for the answers!
> They've been very useful.
> It's intersting to note that even distend is lightly aspirated by Brits.
> And "at all" is aspirated for British/Singaporeans.
> And there are some dialects (Liverpool) who don't aspirate initial t's! I thought all British dialects did it.
> 
> What about t's in non-stressed syllable?
> For example letter, better, water, activity, etc.?




Australian here.

I'd pronounce all of those t's as d's, the exception being 'activity', in which I would aspirate the first /t/.

Do give you an idea of how warped our accent is, I would say:

ledda, bedda, warda, activadee...god, I wish this computer supported phonetic symbols.


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## entangledbank

This came up several weeks ago, and I answered that medial stops as in 'water' were slightly aspirated. (Obviously, we're talking about accents that render them as some kind of [t], not voiced/flapped or a glottal stop.) Someone else pointed out that if you look at the VOT of normal speech they're hardly aspirated at all. So it's actually the length of the preceding vowel that principally distinguishes, say, _water_ and _warder_ or _latter_ and _ladder_. But for a learner, this length distinction might be even harder to make. Coming from Chinese, your aspirated [th] might be impressionistically better in this position, to make the 'voicing' distinction clear.

In sequences like 'at all', the syllabification crosses word boundaries, so its allophone is as in 'a tall' except that 'tall' is likely to have more stress. That is, I don't think Australian/US would use [d] in 'at all', nor would glottalling accents of England use a glottal stop.


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## berndf

entangledbank said:


> This came up several weeks ago, and I answered that medial stops as in 'water' were slightly aspirated. (Obviously, we're talking about accents that render them as some kind of [t], not voiced/flapped or a glottal stop.) Someone else pointed out that if you look at the VOT of normal speech they're hardly aspirated at all. So it's actually the length of the preceding vowel that principally distinguishes, say, _water_ and _warder_ or _latter_ and _ladder_.


Even if the aspiration is too short to be independently perceived it is still accompanied by the characteristic increase in force. You can see this clearly when looking at wave patterns. Relative phoneme lengths play a role but this is usually more important in phonemic separation between voiced and unvoiced final fricatives, like /Vs/ vs. /Vz/, which English maintains even though it has a tendency towards final obstruent devoicing in normal speech.


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## Youngfun

agl126 said:


> ledda, bedda, warda, activadee...god, I wish this computer supported phonetic symbols.


Thank you very much, mate. 
That's why I always feel the Aussie accent as a mix between British and American: American style d's and British style non-rhoticity.
This is off-topic, but I feel Sydney accent as much more American, while the Melbourne one more genuinely Aussie, with its diphtongs more similar to Cockney .


berndf said:


> That is correct, provided /s/ and /t/ occur at the syllable onset. Theoretical /sp-/ and /sb-/, /st-/ and /sd-/ and /sk-/ and /sg-/ would be indistinguishable.
> Practically, the is no problem as /sb/, /sd-/ and /sg-/ onsets don't exist in native words.


Now I cannot think of English words with /sb-/, /sd-/, /sg-/.
But I remember an English speaker having problems in pronouncing the Italian word "sbronzo" (a local variety of cheese) which he pronounced /s*p*rondzo/. While the Italian journalist tried unseccussfully to correct him to say /*z*brondzo/, as in Italian the 's' before a voiced consonant becomes voiced too turning into /z/.
Also, word like "smile" and "sleep" would be pronounced as /z-/ by Italian speakers. I have to make a great effort to pronounce a voiceless /s/.
I read somewhere that while in Italian the assimilation is to de-voice the 's' to /z/, in English it is rather to voice slightly the consonant after 's'.
Though my ears can't hear a different 'more voiced' m in 'smile'  nor a different 'more voiced' l in 'sleep'. 


berndf said:


> Different syllable structure: _di-stend_ vs. _dis-taste_.


The English syllable structure remains a mystery for me. 
As I'm more accostumed to the Italian system, which is purely phonemic-based, instead of the English etymology-based.
In Italian we would never separate differently the same phonemes (in this case /'dist-/) according to different words.


berndf said:


> This is standard in RP (British standard) English.


Thanks! 
I heard that RP is rather a social class accent, rather than a geographical accent as usual.
But, do all Camdrige people speak RP? Or only educated high class people?
Is there a difference between, e.g. Cambridge RP, Oxford RP, London RP, etc.? 


entangledbank said:


> So it's actually the length of the preceding vowel that principally distinguishes, say, _water_ and _warder_ or _latter_ and _ladder_. But for a learner, this length distinction might be even harder to make. Coming from Chinese, your aspirated [th] might be impressionistically better in this position, to make the 'voicing' distinction clear.


You're right.
The Chinese [th] is strongly aspirated, similar to the stressed syllable-initial t's of most English accents. We don't have various degrees of aspiration as in English, it's either aspirated or non-aspirated, as we have the distinctive phonemes [tʰ] and [t].
Maybe that's the reason I don't hear any aspiration in the t of water. 
I personally pronounce it with a [t] sound, or sometimes with a [d] sound, and the final rhoticity is very slight, sometimes becomes non-thoric. My pronunciation is closer to the Australian one.


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## Keith Bradford

Perhaps, for a foreign learner, the important thing to know is that the difference between aspirated and non-aspirated consonants (with the exception of "h" and, for Scots, "wh") is *not phonemic*.  There are no words in English which change their meaning if you aspirate or fail to aspirate, and only one person in ten thousand is actually aware of the difference, either in their own speech or that of others.


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## berndf

Sure it is. Aspiration marks the difference between "gold" and "cold".


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## natkretep

Aspiration rather than voicing? Where I am, there are some speakers who generally do not aspirate their stops. Some Scottish speakers also habitually don't aspirate some of their stops. _Gold_ and _cold_ will still sound different for all of them.


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## berndf

I challenge you to tell me any major accent of English where people voice their initial /g/s.


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## wandle

Do you mean that they are not voiced? 
That is the opposite of what I have always believed and always taught. The following pages say they are voiced:

Teaching English (British Council)
Voiced consonants include:
/b/ as in 'bed' /d/ as in 'dip' /g/ as in 'good' /ð/ as in 'the'

The Sounds of American English
This multimedia page on the University of Iowa website gives an animation and step-by-step explanation of the pronunciation of /g/ in 'goose', 'ago' and 'flag'. It states: The vocal folds are adducted and vibrating.


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## berndf

It depends on the position in the word and on the accent. I practically  all Germanic languages, including English, voicing in word-initial  positions is either non-existent or too short to produce stable phonemic  distinction between /b d g/ on the one hand and /p t k/ on the other  hand. The distinction is achieved through aspiration and force (to sides  of the same coin, basically). Some people therefore regard it as a  misnomer to call /b d g/ "voiced" (see the 2006 edition of Jones here and here).  In other positions, word-finally and inter-vocalically, the realization  of the phonemic distinction (in as far as it is not neutralized)  greatly depends on the variety of English.

See also here.


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## Keith Bradford

We must distinguish between aspiration and voicing!

*Voicing*: The difference between, say, /k/ (unvoiced) and /g/ (voiced). This is of course phonemic in English: put/bud, cotton/gotten etc. etc.

*Aspiration*: The difference between _what?_ pronounced by a Scot and _wot?_ pronounced by a Cockney, and indeed most of us. There are no words as far as I know where dropping the /h/ from this consonant /hw/, or where adding aspiration (for example pronouncing /d/ as if it were the Hindi /dh/), makes any difference to meaning. You will however end up sounding like an Indian if you aspirate too many /d/s, or like an Arab if you aspirate your /g/s.

The same phenomenon is found when English people speak French.  A first-year learner will probably pronounce "Toto" with a slight aspiration - what is sometimes called a "wet T".  He will be understood (because aspiration isn't phonemic in French either), but a French listener will recognise this as a foreign accent.  The correct French pronunciation is "drier", i.e. unaspirated.


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## Brioche

Keith Bradford said:


> We must distinguish between aspiration and voicing!
> 
> *Aspiration*: The difference between _what?_ pronounced by a Scot and _wot?_ pronounced by a Cockney, and indeed most of us. There are no words as far as I know where dropping the /h/ from this consonant /hw/, ..., makes any difference to meaning.
> .



My mother always maintained that _whale_ and _wail_, and _when_ and _wen_, and _which_ and _witch_ and _white_ and Isle of _Wight_ [and various others] were different words with different pronunciations.
She came from the north of Ireland and was of Plantation stock.


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## Keith Bradford

Brioche said:


> My mother always maintained that _whale_ and _wail_, and _when_ and _wen_, and _which_ and _witch_ and _white_ and Isle of _Wight_ [and various others] were different words with different pronunciations...



She was quite right of course.  Perhaps what I should have said is "There are a few words where dropping the /h/ from this consonant /hw/, ..., makes a difference in meaning to people of Scottish origin, but the rest of us seem to live with that anomaly".


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## Giorgio Spizzi

Dear all,

some seem to continue misunderstanding Keith's point.
He is reminding us that you can't find a minimal pair of words in English (ie a pair of words which contain all the same phonemes except one) whose meanings change depending on the use of a certain aspirated *allophone*, eg [ph] in one, or of the corresponding un-aspirated *allophone* [p] of the same phoneme /p/ in the other.
Brutally said, whether you pronounce [phen] or [pen], you'll always be referring to the same writing instrument.

Best 

GS


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## AquisM

<<...>>

I agree with you, though. I suppose it's because in English the voiced and aspirated sounds are considered as allophones and are not distinguished, which leads to the merging of the voiced and unvoiced sounds since what we really are distinguishing in speech normally is just aspirated and unaspirated sounds. I wouldn't say that the voiced consonants are always pronounced as their unvoiced counterparts, though. I've been saying a few words out loud and I realise I do pronounce them as voiced in a sentence, but not when isolated.


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## berndf

<<...>>


AquisM said:


> I wouldn't say that the voiced consonants are always pronounced as their unvoiced counterparts, though.


I agree. What I said it that voicing is in some contexts to weak or non existent (i.e. is too erratic) to produce a stable phonemic opposition.


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## wandle

<<...>>

Wikipedia identifies the fortis / lenis contrast as a feature of Southern German accents.

'There are languages with two sets of contrasting obstruents that are labelled /p t k f s x …/ vs. /b d ɡ v z ɣ …/ even though there is no involvement of voice (or voice onset time) in that contrast. This happens for instance in several Southern German dialects such as Alsatian or Swiss German. Since voice is not involved, this is explained as a contrast in tenseness, called a fortis and lenis contrast.'


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## Youngfun

I agree with Giorgio Spizzi and Keith.
English doesn't distinguish aspirated and non-aspirated. As in Giorgio's example "pen" is pronounced aspirated [pʰen] by most speakers, but non-aspirated [pen] would be understood too.
And that's why most English speaker don't even realize they aspirate consonants, and phonemic transcriptions don't even mark aspiration, but it's used /pen/ instead!

While in Mandarin Chinese they are distinctive. 
So 笨 _bèn_ /pən/ means "stupid" while 喷 _pèn _/pʰən/ means "fragrance". Aspiration is not optional!

Though, especially when I hear British speakers, I often feel their /b d g/ are pronounced closer to unaspirated /p t k/. It sounds like something between /b d g/ and /p t k/.
It seems they are called _partially voiced_ or _semi-voiced _plosives_. 
_The Italian linguist Luciano Canepari marks them as [b d g] with a circle underneath (don't know how to type those symbols).

Mandarin Chinese unaspirated plosives (pinyin: _b, d, g_ /p, t, k/) are also actually _partially voiced_, usually in casual speech and in songs.
It was also discussed here: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=29075&PN=3&TPN=2

While in Italian Central (non-_Tuscan_) and Southern pronunciation, _p, t, k _/p, t, k/ are also_ partially voiced.
_
My pronunciation is influenced by both of my two native languages: Italian (Central accent from Rome) and Mandarin Chinese.
Recently I realised that my pronunciation of /p, t, k/ is also _partially voiced_, and I've never noticed that before!
Once I said _packing _with non-aspirated /k/ sound (back to the topic, here is when I don't know whether to aspirate or not to). 
My friend who is a native speaker asked me: "Pardon me? What's _pa*gg*ing_?"
Another time I didn't know how to stalker in Chinese, so I said it in English, and my Chinese friend asked: "I don't know this word. What's a _stal*g*er_?"

Because my natural way to pronounce unaspirated /k/ is actually a partially-voiced /g (with circle)/ so English speakers may understand it as g.
Chinese speakers would also understand a g, as they would aspirated all English k's.

So the British pronunciation _boy_ could be very similar to how I (and Central-Southern speakers) pronounce Italian _poi_.
And British _bay _may be similar to Chinese 北 _běi_.

The Wikipedia article about Plosives says:


> *, [d], [ɡ] (in most dialects: partially voiced word-initially, fully voiced intervocally)*


*

But I feel this is true only for British accents. 
To my ears, in the American accents they are fully voiced. (as they have rather the opposite behaviour: to pronounce t as d)

Berndf often talks about VOT, so I found the table on the Wikipedia entry about VOT that compares different languages.
English has Moderate aspiration (I suppose p, t, k) and Partially voiced (I suppose b, d, g).
I would put Mandarin pinyin b, d, g /p, t, k/ on Tenuis in proper speech, but on Partially voiced in casual speech. Then pinyin p, t, k /pʰ, tʰ, kʰ/ on Moderate or Strong aspiration. I feel Chinese consonants are aspirated more strongly than English, but not as strong as Korean.
Standard Italian and Northern accents would be the same as Spanish: Tenuis for p, t, k and Fully voiced for b, d, g.
In Tuscan accent p, t, k would have Mild aspiration* or even Moderate aspiration when they are doubled (e.g. mattina [matʰ'tʰina]).
In Central and Southern accents p, t, k would be Partially voiced (e.g. city of Rome) or even Fully-voiced becoming homophones with b, d, g (e.g. countryside surrounding Rome).

*By the way, I've never realised that Japanese has mild aspirations...

But I'm not a phonetician. Everything I wrote in my posts are just my opinions. *


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## Evanec

Hey there, I'm Evan. I'd like to know the rule of aspiration. All I know about aspiration is that when a consonant follows s or x, they remain unaspirated. So, I'm wondering if the word like the second 'p' in the word 'people', 't' in 'winter', 'k' in 'miracle', 'k' in 'uncle' and some words like shopping, taking, look at, stop it are aspirated. How do you know if the letter is unaspirated? Are there any rules? Thank you!


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## natkretep

Mod note: I've merged Evan's thread (post 27) with a recent thread on aspiration.

Welcome to the forum, Evan! Have a look at the earlier posts, and see if the discussion is useful.


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## berndf

Youngfun said:


> I agree with Giorgio Spizzi and Keith.
> English doesn't distinguish aspirated and non-aspirated. As in Giorgio's example "pen" is pronounced aspirated [pʰen] by most speakers, but non-aspirated [pen] would be understood too.
> And that's why most English speaker don't even realize they aspirate consonants, and phonemic transcriptions don't even mark aspiration, but it's used /pen/ instead!


Then you should explain what distinguishes "pen" from "Ben". Because...


Youngfun said:


> English has _Moderate aspiration_ (I suppose _p, t, k_) and _Partially voiced_ (I suppose _b, d, g_).


... after a pause (i.e. at the beginning of an utterance) the description of English /b/,/d/,/g/ as _partially voiced_ does not apply. The spectogram in the Wikipedia article you quoted the word "die" even with a positive VOT.


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## Keith Bradford

What distinguishes "pen" from "Ben" is the *voicing *(the vibration of the larynx) and not the *breathing *(the greater or lesser passage of air through the mouth); in fact the archetypal aspirated sound in English /h/ has no voicing at all. Certain speakers, Marlilyn Monroe for instance, have very breathy speech. This makes no difference to their voicing, though it is sex-related. Male-to-female transsexuals for instance are encouraged to use more breath and less voice to make their speech sound more feminine, and often only need to raise the pitch very slightly (less than an octave) to achieve a passable result.


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## berndf

Keith Bradford said:


> What distinguishes "pen" from "Ben" is the *voicing *(the vibration of the larynx)...


I am sorry Keith, but this is simply not true. What native speaker *think* they say and what they *do* say are often different kind of birds. I had to learn this myself concerning my own ideas of how I pronounce my "voiced" plosives.

For the /b/ in "Ben" to be voiced, voicing (=vibration of the vocal cords) would have to start before the plosive release. This would be visible in spectrograms (in sample spectrogram in Wikipeadia, the opposite is clearly visible), but this is not the case, at least not often enough to produce a stable phonemic distinction. In Romance and Slavic languages this is different. There /b/-/d/-/g/ are clearly voiced even after a stop but not in Germanic languages.

Again, we are talking about initial plosives, not about intervocal or final ones.


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## wandle

According to the Wikipedia page mentioned, English initial plosives are partially voiced:

'Voiced plosives have a voice onset time noticeably less than zero, a negative VOT, meaning the vocal cords start vibrating before the stop is released. With a fully voiced stop, the VOT coincides with the onset of the stop; with a partially voiced stop, such as English [b, d, ɡ] in initial position, voicing begins sometime during the closure (occlusion) of the consonant.'

This says that the consonant is voiced for part of the time it is being pronounced.

Given that in English we aspirate both /p/ and /b/, then without this voicing what difference would there be?


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## Keith Bradford

I take your point, though I find I often do begin voicing before the consonant when (living in a foreign country) I have to spell words that are unfamiliar to my listener - my surname for instance. 

What's your answer then? What distinguishes "pen" from "Ben"? Because they're both commonly aspirated I think, with no loss of differentiation for native listeners.

My post crossed with Wandle's; I think we're making the same point (me less well).


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## Giorgio Spizzi

Hullo, bern.

I think Keith is right. 
I imagine you consider English a Germanic language. Well, in RP English the first phone of "Ben" *is* voiced, ie the vibration of the vocal cords does start *before the contact* between upper and lower lip has taken place. 
German is different. I happen to hear the Pope often, and I must say that, although he has made tremendous efforts to learn Italian, he doesn't seem to get rid of the typical "errors" usually associated with a German-speaking person expressing themselves in Italian:

1. the glottal stop
2. the fortis pronunciation of voiced phones, not only at the beginning of words: /ænt nefə fo'ket θæt θə poːp lʌfs ju:/

Best 

GS


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## wandle

Coming back to the Wikipedia page, the spectrograms are illustrating the difference between /t/ and /d/. The note says:

'Voice Onset Timing spectrograms for English "tie" and "die". The voiceless gap between release and voicing is highlighted in red. Here the phoneme /t/ has a VOT of 95 ms., and /d/ has one of 25 ms.'

That seems to mean that the additional period of voicing - the space of 70 ms - occurs during the pronunciation of the consonant.


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## berndf

wandle said:


> According to the Wikipedia page mentioned, English initial plosives are partially voiced:
> 
> 'Voiced plosives have a voice onset time noticeably less than zero, a negative VOT, meaning the vocal cords start vibrating before the stop is released. With a fully voiced stop, the VOT coincides with the onset of the stop; with a partially voiced stop, such as English [b, d, ɡ] in initial position, voicing begins sometime during the closure (occlusion) of the consonant.'


This description is a bit odd for two reasons: One, it is immediately contradicted by the sample next to it (_die/tie_ spectrograms) and, two, because initial plosives have only an audible release but no audible closure which renders the definition of _partially voices_ (voice onset between closure and release) non applicable.

But even if the average initial lenis plosive had slight voicing (say 30 ms), which I seriously doubt from my experience, at least with British English speakers, it could not be the defining characteristic as there are to many completely unvoiced /b/s, /d/s or /t/s.


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## berndf

wandle said:


> That seems to mean that the additional period of voicing - the space of 70 ms - occurs during the pronunciation of the consonant.


It does not. VOT=25 means that phonation starts 25ms after the plosive release. The spectogram is quite clear: you see the plosive release on the left side of the red band and the start of phonation on the right side.


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## berndf

Keith Bradford said:


> I take your point, though I find I often do begin voicing before the consonant when (living in a foreign country) I have to spell words that are unfamiliar to my listener - my surname for instance.


Of course, and so do I when I spell my first name to a French speaker. But this doesn't mean you or I do it in normal speech and certainly not that lack of voicing alone would cause you or me to hear "pen" rather than "Ben". 


Keith Bradford said:


> What's your answer then? What distinguishes "pen" from "Ben"? Because they're both commonly aspirated I think, with no loss of differentiation for native listeners.


The remaining possible characteristics are aspiration and energy. Quantity (time between closure and release) is not an option in initial position.


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## Keith Bradford

I've been sitting here repeating "ben" and "pen" to myself and, in the absence of an oscilloscope, the only difference I detect is a hint of /m/ immediately before "ben"; both are lightly aspirated *. I take this as evidence of voicing at the onset of the word.

It applies whether I speak loudly or quietly, with or without energy, even whispering.

I think I'll stick to the old-fashioned definition: *initial /b/ is voiced*.

____________________________________

* PS : I tried this again with a finger on my Adam's apple and also noticed that my larynx briefly dropped at the onset of /b/, in a manner similar to the pronunciation of /m/.

Interestingly, modern Greek spells "bar" as mpar i.e. mpar.


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## Giorgio Spizzi

"Interestingly, modern Greek spells "bar" as mpar. i.e. mpar."

Very true, Keith. And of course this fills the gap left vacant after they started pronuncing letter "beta" as /v/. What used to be a /'biblos/ is now a /'vivlos/.

GS


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## berndf

Keith Bradford said:


> Interestingly, modern Greek spells "bar" as mpar i.e. mpar.


μπ is the standard transcription of the Latin letter "b". This has nothing to do with how it is realized in English.


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## berndf

Giorgio Spizzi said:


> 2. the fortis pronunciation of voiced phones, not only at the beginning of words: /ænt nefə fo'ket θæt θə poːp lʌfs ju:/


This is a completely different issue. This is about *how* we distinguish between /d/ and /t/ and not *if* we do so. And in German, /d/ does not exist at all at the end of the word; German words like "Bund" and "bunt" are not distinguishable at all while English "Ben" and "pen" are distinguishable (and they would also be so in German). The question is how they are distinguished.


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## Loob

berndf said:


> The question is how they are distinguished.


I've been watching this thread with interest.  It seems to me that there are two separate issues: "how are initial /p/ and /b/ distinguishable in VOT analyses?" and "how is it helpful - for second language learners of English in particular - to distinguish between initial /p/ and /b/?"

My vote, as regards the second question, goes to "voicing-plus-aspiration", even if the voicing of initial /b/ is only partial.


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## ribran

Keith Bradford said:


> I've been sitting here repeating "ben" and "pen" to myself and, in the absence of an oscilloscope, the only difference I detect is a hint of /m/ immediately before "ben"; both are lightly aspirated.



Of course, as in "m'bye." I don't think I've ever heard my mom say "bye." It's always "m'bye."


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## natkretep

Loob said:


> I've been watching this thread with interest.  It seems to me that there are two separate issues: "how are initial /p/ and /b/ distinguishable in VOT analyses?" and "how is it helpful - for second language learners of English in particular - to distinguish between initial /p/ and /b/?"
> 
> My vote, as regards the second question, goes to "voicing-plus-aspiration", even if the voicing of initial /b/ is only partial.



I agree whole-heartedly with Loob. We can hear the difference clearly between an English speaker's 'pie' and 'bye'. I can also hear the difference between a Cantonese-accented 'pie' and 'bye' (where no voicing is used). The latter will always strike me as Cantonese accented, and the key difference between that and an English speaker's 'bye' is voicing.


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## berndf

natkretep said:


> The latter will always strike me as Cantonese accented, and the key difference between that and an English speaker's 'bye' is voicing.


The voice lag distributions of Cantonese /p/ and /pʰ/ differ indeed from those of English /b/ and /p/. This comparison was already made by Lisker and Abrahamson in the 1960s. On slide 2 here you find a reproduction of their analyses of the Spanish and English /d/-/t/ pairs and the corresponding /t/-/tʰ/ pair in Cantonese. As you can see, voiced English /d/ does occur (as opposed to Cantonese voiced /t/ which does not occur) but it is a rare variant. The modal values of English /d/ and of Cantonese /t/ which are relevant for the phonemic separation are in both cases in VOT>=0, i.e. voiceless, territory. The modal value is for English /d/ in the 0-10ms bracket and for Cantonese /t/ in the 10-20ms bracket. This is very different from Spanish /d/ always shows marked voicing (VOT <= -60ms).


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## Evanec

natkretep said:


> Mod note: I've merged Evan's thread (post 27) with a recent thread on aspiration.
> 
> Welcome to the forum, Evan! Have a look at the earlier posts, and see if the discussion is useful.



Thank you for merging the thread!


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## Evanec

Can someone please answer my questions if possible?  I'd like to know the rule of aspiration. All I know about aspiration is that when a consonant follows s or x, they remain unaspirated. So, I'm wondering if the word like the second 'p' in the word 'people', 't' in 'winter', 'k' in 'miracle', 'k' in 'uncle' and some words like shopping, taking, look at, stop it are aspirated. How do you know if the letter is unaspirated? Are there any rules? Thank you!


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## natkretep

Evanec, it would depend on the accent. In my accent, I would say definitely yes, they are all aspirated. In some accents the 't' in _winter_ disappears (many American accents).


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## berndf

Evanec said:


> Can someone please answer my questions if possible?  I'd like to know the rule of aspiration. All I know about aspiration is that when a consonant follows s or x, they remain unaspirated. So, I'm wondering if the word like the second 'p' in the word 'people', 't' in 'winter', 'k' in 'miracle', 'k' in 'uncle' and some words like shopping, taking, look at, stop it are aspirated. How do you know if the letter is unaspirated? Are there any rules? Thank you!


As Natketep said, this depends on accent. It may also depend on language register.
In British Received Pronunciation (this is what he probably meant by _my accent_) /p/, /t/ and /k/ are always aspirated except after /s/ in a syllable onset.
In General American aspiration of all fortis plosives (except after /s/) occurs only in higher registers, i.e. in official speeches. In more common registers of GA, aspiration occurs only in initial position and in the onset of a stressed syllable (again except after /s/). Phonemic separation between fortis and lenis plosives are usually defined through voicing, i.e. the difference between_ angle_ and _ankle_ is full voicing of the /g/. In final positions an additional characteristic is that /b/,/d/ and /g/ have no audible release (I believe this is the same for Cantonese stop codas). In more colloquial registers, intervocalic /d/ and /t/ lose their phonemic separation and are both realized as a voiced alveolar tap.


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## Evanec

natkretep said:


> Evanec, it would depend on the accent. In my accent, I would say definitely yes, they are all aspirated. In some accents the 't' in _winter_ disappears (many American accents).





berndf said:


> As Natketep said, this depends on accent. It may also depend on language register.
> In British Received Pronunciation (this is what he probably meant by _my accent_) /p/, /t/ and /k/ are always aspirated except after /s/ in a syllable onset.
> In General American aspiration of all fortis plosives (except after /s/) occurs only in higher registers, i.e. in official speeches. In more common registers of GA, aspiration occurs only in initial position and in the onset of a stressed syllable (again except after /s/). Phonemic separation between fortis and lenis plosives are usually defined through voicing, i.e. the difference between_ angle_ and _ankle_ is full voicing of the /g/. In final positions an additional characteristic is that /b/,/d/ and /g/ have no audible release (I believe this is the same for Cantonese stop codas). In more colloquial registers, intervocalic /d/ and /t/ lose their phonemic separation and are both realized as a voiced alveolar tap.



Thank you for the wonderful answer. So, I think my question has been resolved. Thank you ever so much1 ^-^


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## cointi

berndf said:


> In General American aspiration of all fortis plosives (except after /s/) occurs only in higher registers, i.e. in official speeches. In more common registers of GA, aspiration occurs only in initial position and in the onset of a stressed syllable (again except after /s/).



Somewhat late to the party, but is there any chance you could provide sources on this?


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