Good, well the second part of describing plosives particularly is aspiration.
We've already heard really what that is.
Aspiration is sometimes also called force of articulation.
That's sort of how much air we expel as we pronounce a certain consonant.
This is particularly important in talking about stops.
So it's how much air really comes out.
So you'll notice that there's a difference between t and d.
D has the voice, t has more aspiration.
Put them to your hand, one hand on your throat and the other one in front of your mouth and
you'll get what I'm talking about, d, t, t, d.
Everybody try it once.
Good.
Okay, so this is really what we mean when we talk about aspiration or force of articulation.
What this means is that there's in fact yet again a distinction.
It's not specifically the same thing as voice, but they always fall together for the most
part.
So the so-called fortis consonants mean they have lots of force of articulation.
There's lots of air coming out and they always fall together with the unvoiced consonants.
So the t is fortis and the d is, anybody know what the opposite is?
The opposite of fortis, no?
Linus.
So a Linus consonant has weak aspiration, not so much air, and that describes the lack
of air that comes out when you use the d, for example.
And again, it's not describing the same feature.
The voice is what you do here, the aspiration is what you do up here, but they fall together.
So voiced consonants tend to be Linus.
This is important because they have a certain effect on how you pronounce not only the consonant
itself, but some of the things around it.
We'll see how that really has an effect in a few minutes.
Okay?
Good.
The important thing to know about aspiration is that it's often affected also by wear in
a word or with what other sounds around it, the phoneme or the consonant occurs.
So if it's an initial position, it's going to have somewhat less than at the end, pi,
some of the aspiration gets just turned into the following vowel.
If it comes after esta, there's even less, it's like you've sort of released so much
air with the s, that the pi, the p, spy, it's already less than in pi, pi, spy, almost sounds
slightly Linus there.
Good.
If you have it before a vowel, then you're likely to hear some more of the aspiration
to rap on, then if you have it before a nasal, for example, rap music, there's almost no
aspiration there whatsoever.
Rap music, rap on, do you hear it?
A home organic sound that is a sound that's created with the same articulators will also
have a different effect.
Rap beat, rap beat, it's almost gone.
I don't even hear the put at all, rap beat.
At the end of an utterance, of course, or right at the end of a sentence or something
like that, you'll hear lots of it, help, help, stop, that kind of thing.
Lots of aspiration going on there.
But if you have it before a voiced sound, even the stop, then it changes again, stop
that.
So less aspiration there again.
And finally, of course, if the word is written with a T, then we get the alveolar tap, assuming
it comes between vowels.
So hit it.
I don't say hit it.
That's actually hard to pronounce, hit it.
Americans are very lazy.
We make everything as easy to pronounce as possible.
We're going to see more examples of that in a few minutes.
So there it is, the alveolar tap.
Like I said, this is also a kind of environmental effect.
So it's the fact that this sound comes between two vowel sounds, for the most part.
That leads to this phoneme, it says phoneme there.
I think I wanted to write phenomenon without a couple of letters.
Good.
Here's a good example.
A speaker of received pronunciation would probably say metal, metal or letter.
We Americans, we say letter or metal.
That means that there's some difficulties with words like this, because most people
do not hear the distinction between ladder and ladder, Adam and Adam.
My brother-in-law's name is Adam.
Or even, although we will look at a reason why there might be easier to distinguish between
writing and writing.
Could you hear the difference?
Writing and writing?
A little bit.
I've got some nods there.
Okay.
So the important thing here that this alveolar tap always occurs where, or doesn't always
occur at every T, but it often occurs where a T is written, but is surrounded by certain
letters.
It's not only vowels.
There's the most common one, you can find it between vowels, whether across two words
or within a single word.
But you'll also find it at the beginning of suffixes, so 50, accepted, accepted.
That's an interesting one that's sort of in between the d and the t, accepted, because
the voiceless p makes it slightly less voiced, but the following vowel with the suffix makes
it more leaness there.
Good.
After ur or ul, you'll find it very frequently.
Party.
I guess with my friends from the UK say party, party, or filter.
I can't do that one, filter.
So more common places where you will come across this alveolar tap.
There are a couple things you should know where you are not going to find them at the
beginning of stressed syllables or in front of these two suffixes that you might find
at the very end there.
They're not really suffixes actually.
So if it's a stressed syllable, then it's attention and not attention.
I can't even pronounce that right.
Attention, it's a stressed syllable, so of course the t keeps its features.
Doesn't get turned into the alveolar tap.
Couple of interesting ones like written or button.
In fact, while most of the rules say I should pronounce it written, I find that probably
95% of Americans say written.
So there is our glottal stop, written.
You can see it in the transcription there, or button.
Although the glottal stop is considered not so frequent in standard American English,
I seem to find more and more places where it comes up actually.
So that's what we're getting at there.
Questions about the alveolar tap right now?
Well, I hope I can get you to practice a little bit later and then we'll see how it goes.
Good.
Okay, we talked about leanness.
We're going to look at leanness endings here.
What do you notice about these two words?
Or actually, let's look at all of them together.
Maybe if you read them to yourself, think of them, pronounce them out loud, let's see
if you notice it before you start hearing it from me.
These leanness final consonants have an effect, in fact, on the length of the preceding vowel.
So bat, bad, rack, rag, it's really stretched out almost, batch, badge, even in a more complex
consonant like that, like the ch and j, you'll have it, half, have, you hear the length there?
This is really important because a lot of the time it's not the aspiration or the voicing
of a consonant, which listeners determine what that word was that you said by, but by
the length of the vowel.
So even if you get the voicing of that consonant slightly wrong, as long as the length of the
vowel is right, they will understand you.
You understand?
So try to remember that one.
This is really interesting because, of course, it doesn't happen so much in German.
So you'll notice here that in German, well, it doesn't seem to really matter, krab, you
can't even, of course, there's no word like krab, but if we look at the ones down at the
bottom, zat and zat.
And in fact, I've noticed that this is a source of a lot of spelling error, spelling problems
for children learning to write.
They can never tell, should it be, you know, do I spell zant with a T or with a D?
That's what I get from my kids all the time.
Geburtag, often with a K, things like that.
So I think that's one of the reasons why Lena's endings are a particular issue for German
speakers when learning English.
Something to think about, therefore, zat, zat.
Yeah, the point here is that the consonant sound doesn't have that effect.
So it's the same consonant sound, but the length of the vowel isn't affected by it.
Whereas in log and block, we have two different consonant sounds, same vowel sound.
Okay.
Thank you for asking.
I hadn't clarified that point yet.
Because these Lena's endings are so important, we're now going to do sort of a little mini
exercise where you're going to listen and tell me what you hear.
So I'm going to read one of them.
You're going to tell me, do you hear the first one or the second one?
We've done exercises like this before.
So white lies.
Bennett?
The second one.
That was white lies.
So lice, lies, lice, lies.
Almost the vowel almost sounds so different that you think it has to be transcribed differently
too, but it doesn't work that way.
So get a cab.
Yes.
That was the second one.
Get a cab.
Get a cap.
So here you get it more in sentences, a little easier to deal with.
Hit the nail.
That was the first one.
Hit the nail.
Can you hear it?
Hit the nail.
That's really, really tricky because the i is such a short vowel already that you can
barely hear the difference there.
Put the rag here.
There we go.
Yes.
That was the first one.
Put the rag here.
Put the rack here.
So there are the consonants more distinct somehow.
Put the rag here.
Put the rack here.
How about this one?
A lot of sauce.
Ah, I'm getting more hands now.
Yes.
That was the second one.
A lot of sauce.
Very good.
A lot of sauce.
Good.
Maybe I'll do one more and then I'll see if you guys want to do some.
So I'd like some peace.
I'd like some peace.
Yes.
That was the first one.
I'd like some peace.
I'd like some peas.
Yes.
They heated it.
Yeah.
That was the second one, but in fact, that one's sort of like a trick question because
they really sound identical.
Thanks to the alveolar tap, there's no distinction between they heated it and they heated it.
Good.
Okay, the last one is my favorite because it causes so much trouble with so many non-native
speakers.
Oh, there we go.
I can't tell you how many times I've heard life when it's live.
That's probably a problem with the German, I guess it's the, that's the distinction there,
but it's also an issue of if you've got that leanest ending right, then it should be easier.
Life live, you hear the distinction in the vowel sound, life live.
If you say live, then I still think you're talking live, saying live instead of life.
So get your, stretch out your vowel there, live, that's the trick there.
So live, life, good.
So the past form, the past tense of cap would be capped.
We don't say cap, that's again, too hard to pronounce, but ends again on a voiceless
sound, then the suffix will also be pronounced voiced, voiceless, graph, graphs, graft, yeah?
Back, backs, backed, yeah?
Do you see them all?
So those are all ending on voiceless sounds and that means that the suffixes also have
the voiceless sound.
Soon as you get a voiced one, then it's gonna sound different.
So cab, cabs, cabbed, cabbed, not capped, that's too hard to pronounce again, then it
sounds more like capped or rave, there's a good one, I like rave, rave, raves and raved,
yeah?
These seem more intuitive because that's what they look like, right?
And bag, bags and bagged.
Okay, any questions?
I'm gonna make you practice it just to pick those up, oh, not important.
With the sibilance again, we have cache and caches, cached, it's not in there, but kiss
and kisses, there you go, you've got the unstressed vowel in front because it's too hard to pronounce
any other way.
When it comes to past tense forms, you have it also with the alveolar plosives, so flood,
flooded, you can't pronounce flooded without inserting that vowel sound, same with t, so
mat, matted.
Oh, and there's the alveolar tap again, okay.
So just really briefly, sibilance, always take on the is ending and alveolar plosives,
the id ending, if you're looking at those.
Any questions?
No?
Okay, good.