Quote Originally Posted by Lampada View Post
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".