In the rear of our mouthes at the roof of our mouthes, we have something called a 'velum' or soft palette. It acts like a valve to close off the passage of air to our nose. You can call it a 'nose valve' if you want. The uvula (wee punching bag thingy) hangs down from the back edge of the velum. We native English speakers who asperate our /p/, /t/, /k/'s close this valve and push air into our mouthes to create a pressure build up. I doubt that I could pronounce an unasperated 'p' to save my life, but I might pull off an unasperated 'b'. For me, the trick seems to be learning how to keep my nose valve open whilst pronouncing the sound. I would need years of practice to get this down but being aware of this velum valve is helpful in my opinion. I don't know how hard it would be to learn how to automatically close it when you've spent your whole life speaking a language where these sounds are always unasperated. I guess probably just as hard.
American English speakers do produce unaspirated stops. To me, it's particularly noticeable in consonant clusters and in word final position. The /p/ in spin and cap sounds very different than the /p/ in pot, for example.
@@Bakul-Soman I agree that it sounds different but I consider the difference to be slight which is why most people don't notice it. You notice it because you have a trained ear. My opinion is that you say "very different" as a way of emphasizing your point that the two /p/ sounds are not pronounced exactly the same. Either way, it is still recognized as a /p/ sound. A Honda Civic with custom wheels is still recognized as a Honda Civic. Phoneticists or phoneticians like to recognize every difference as a new sound and give it a new glyph, ID card and Social Security Number. That's fine but most people don't care that much.
I'm sorry if I sound disrespectful of Establishment Phonetics but all of this is from the Cambridge dictionary and supported by every online source I look at: boy noun [ C ] UK /bɔɪ/ US /bɔɪ/ hey exclamation informal UK /heɪ/ US /heɪ/ nine number UK /naɪn/ US /naɪn/ ---------- night noun UK /naɪt/ US /naɪt/ EVERY one of those diphthongs is wrong and it's easy to prove. This is little Mikey with his box of Crayola Crayons level stuff! If you can't get that right, you've destroyed your own credibility not me!
Excellent lesson as always! I have always been under the (mis)apprehension that the Standard American accent contains aspiration and the standard British accent does not. However, I have learnt, that both of them actually contain the aspiration it just seems more pronounced and overt in the American accent. However, I had not paid attention to the "rules" regarding the position of the phoneme and the aspect of the stress syllable. That was eye-opening for me. Once again.... an excellent lesson! Keep 'em coming (with the appropriate level of aspiration on the K and the C in that sentence) :)
I had trouble following you for the first few minutes before I realized that I wasn't your target audience. As a lifelong native speaker of General American English, I'll let everyone know that I don't know how to pronounce these sounds unasperated. In the word 'piper', I heavily asperate the first 'p' and lightly asperate the second one. The breath puff on my hand test indicates a light asperation on the second 'p'. In a word like 'tighter', I commonly change the 2nd 't' to a 'd'. If I heard somebody asperate both 't's, I'd still understand the word very well but I'd think that the speaker was trying to be a perfectionist or having an interesting accent. When 't' occurs at the end of a word, I usually replace it with a glottal stop, so that's unasperated for sure😅.
Yes, there is always a puff of air when you say a stop because of the mechanics of how the sound is produced, but there is a significant difference in the amount of air that is pushed put during an aspirated stops vs unassisted stop.
In the rear of our mouthes at the roof of our mouthes, we have something called a 'velum' or soft palette. It acts like a valve to close off the passage of air to our nose. You can call it a 'nose valve' if you want. The uvula (wee punching bag thingy) hangs down from the back edge of the velum. We native English speakers who asperate our /p/, /t/, /k/'s close this valve and push air into our mouthes to create a pressure build up.
I doubt that I could pronounce an unasperated 'p' to save my life, but I might pull off an unasperated 'b'. For me, the trick seems to be learning how to keep my nose valve open whilst pronouncing the sound. I would need years of practice to get this down but being aware of this velum valve is helpful in my opinion. I don't know how hard it would be to learn how to automatically close it when you've spent your whole life speaking a language where these sounds are always unasperated. I guess probably just as hard.
American English speakers do produce unaspirated stops. To me, it's particularly noticeable in consonant clusters and in word final position. The /p/ in spin and cap sounds very different than the /p/ in pot, for example.
@@Bakul-Soman I agree that it sounds different but I consider the difference to be slight which is why most people don't notice it. You notice it because you have a trained ear. My opinion is that you say "very different" as a way of emphasizing your point that the two /p/ sounds are not pronounced exactly the same. Either way, it is still recognized as a /p/ sound. A Honda Civic with custom wheels is still recognized as a Honda Civic. Phoneticists or phoneticians like to recognize every difference as a new sound and give it a new glyph, ID card and Social Security Number. That's fine but most people don't care that much.
I'm sorry if I sound disrespectful of Establishment Phonetics but all of this is from the Cambridge dictionary and supported by every online source I look at:
boy
noun [ C ]
UK /bɔɪ/ US /bɔɪ/
hey
exclamation informal
UK /heɪ/ US /heɪ/
nine
number
UK /naɪn/ US /naɪn/
----------
night
noun
UK /naɪt/ US /naɪt/
EVERY one of those diphthongs is wrong and it's easy to prove. This is little Mikey with his box of Crayola Crayons level stuff! If you can't get that right, you've destroyed your own credibility not me!
Excellent lesson as always! I have always been under the (mis)apprehension that the Standard American accent contains aspiration and the standard British accent does not. However, I have learnt, that both of them actually contain the aspiration it just seems more pronounced and overt in the American accent. However, I had not paid attention to the "rules" regarding the position of the phoneme and the aspect of the stress syllable. That was eye-opening for me.
Once again.... an excellent lesson! Keep 'em coming (with the appropriate level of aspiration on the K and the C in that sentence) :)
Thanks, Rahul!! I love that " Keep them coming" had the correct aspiration pattern 😅😅😅
I had trouble following you for the first few minutes before I realized that I wasn't your target audience. As a lifelong native speaker of General American English, I'll let everyone know that I don't know how to pronounce these sounds unasperated. In the word 'piper', I heavily asperate the first 'p' and lightly asperate the second one. The breath puff on my hand test indicates a light asperation on the second 'p'. In a word like 'tighter', I commonly change the 2nd 't' to a 'd'. If I heard somebody asperate both 't's, I'd still understand the word very well but I'd think that the speaker was trying to be a perfectionist or having an interesting accent.
When 't' occurs at the end of a word, I usually replace it with a glottal stop, so that's unasperated for sure😅.
Yes, there is always a puff of air when you say a stop because of the mechanics of how the sound is produced, but there is a significant difference in the amount of air that is pushed put during an aspirated stops vs unassisted stop.
are you an Indian?
Yes..