Thread: Me speaking in English

Originally Posted by Marcus

No, Throbert, English b, d, g are not aspirated at all, that's one of the main differences between them and p, t, k. Voiced aspirated exist in many Languages of India, native English speakers cannot pronounce them without special training.

Да, пора уж подучить Роберта английским звукам, а то он нас тут в конец запутает.

Originally Posted by Lampada

Да, пора уж подучить Роберта английским звукам, а то он нас тут в конец запутает.

LOL!

But I think that Marcus was partly correct -- I probably used the term aspirated incorrectly in my post (i.e., not in the proper technical sense that linguists use it).

However, I would insist that English speakers tend to release more air with the /b/ sound, in comparison to Spanish or Russian speakers, for example. At the same time, there is less air than with the /p/ sound, so perhaps it's incorrect to describe the /b/ as aspirated. Also, from Google, I find that in the Indo-Aryan languages, /b/ and /bh/ are separate phonemes, while in English, there is only the phoneme /b/, which is still /b/ whether you "aspirate" it (for want of a better term) a lot or a little.

P.S. I listened to the "Jana Gana Mana" song that Marcus linked to -- and, yes, he's correct that I (as a native English speaker) do not say the /b/ in "boy" the same as the /bh/ in Bharata bhagya. So, perhaps, I shouldn't have used the word "aspirate." Even so, to my ears, some Russians do not... um... "push out enough air" when pronouncing the /b/ in English. Or perhaps Marcus could agree to describe the English /b/ as "semi-aspirated", while the /p/ is "aspirated".