3 ms·

I thought B and P were differentiated by the aspiration

• mantap 7y ago
  You can do an experiment to find out. Try saying "spa" and "sba". In English plosives are not aspirated after an S. So if the only difference is aspiration then it should sound exactly the same.
  • dspig 7y ago
    At least for me, P has an extra pop of air so sounds slightly different
  • wodenokoto 7y ago
    I’m inclined to change the vowel sound in sba compared to spa, but I’m pretty sure the consonant sound is the same.
• jdmichal 7y ago
  It's not aspiration, but rather the delay in onset of voicing. /b/ begins voicing before release, /p/ begins very close to release, and /pʰ/ begins after release. You might also be thinking about the fact that, where English speakers would use /pʰ/, they tend to hear /p/ as /b/. So while an English speaker would say <pat> as /pʰat/, they will hear /pat/ as <bat>.
  • kragen 7y ago
    Right, /p/ in positions where it is contrastive with /b/ is distinguished by both voicing and aspiration. So if someone says [pæt] instead of [pʰæt], those two features are out of sync; the listener can either error-correct it to [bæt] or to [pʰæt]. (And this is why "b" is used in hanyu pinyin to represent unaspirated [p], and analogously "d" for unaspirated [t].)