Having trouble with т's and д's

I finally got together the courage to send my Russian penfriend a recording of me reading out loud some Russian. :oops:

She says I aspirate my т's. What does this mean? I understand that h's are aspirated in English (or not if you grew up close to South London) but how can you aspirate a т? Apparently my тs and дs are also alveolar and not dental. This has something to do with where I put my tongue I think.

Would someone mind doing me a recording that makes the differences between Russian and English T and D sounds clear?

Thank you!

You have to grasp the idea of pronuncing them technically, at first.

Aspiration means having a strong air-flow you produce along with pronouncing т. Aitches cannot be aspirated because they're just the effect of letting your air out of your throat.

«Dental» speaks for itself. You just move the tip of your tongue to the front teeth and then articulate the needed sound.

I tried to put it simple. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rainbowworrier

Would someone mind doing me a recording that makes the differences between Russian and English T and D sounds clear?

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It is someting like that ( http://learning-eng.narod.ru/tandd.mp3 , size: 235 kb).

The text is

тэ дэ
т д
t d
tie
тай
desk
дэск
тай
деск
tie
desk
[/url]

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rtyom

Aspiration means having a strong air-flow you produce along with pronouncing т. Aitches cannot be aspirated because they're just the effect of letting your air out of your throat.

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Mmm...well, you can tell I never did a university degree course in foreign languages. I have never learned any phonetics, so this is all new to me.

I have just spoken to my penfriend on the phone and she says that when the English say "t" they say "hth" whereas the Russian "т" is a weedy little sound by comparison, like a "t" that just isn't making an effort. I think I can hear the difference...sort of...can't do "д" yet though. Or most of the palatised consonants. :oops: Just a matter of practice I suppose.

Just conciously try to put your tongue as close to your teeth as possible - press it to the inner side of your upper teeth, as you do when checking whether they are all in place, and then try to pronounce 'т' or 'д'.
If it doesn't work try the extreme technique and almost stick it between teeth. :)

Learning English at school we had the opposite problem, trying to pronounce t and d. It was a while untill we managed to curve our toungs backwards to the palate to pronounce 't' and 'd'.

Light a match and holding it in front of your mouth say "tie". There will be a big puff of air out of your mouth and the match will go out, or at least flicker. This will happen for the consonants p, t, k and is called aspiration (the air coming out). It does not happen when a Russian says пой, ты, ко.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rainbowworrier

Thank you!

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May be this be useful. Near the bottom - about unaspirated t.

http://linguisticmystic.com/tags/conven ... quisition/

Also there is a link to recorded audio.