4 ms·
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 releas
by 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 agoRight, /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].)