I was braying all day on Sunday - aspiration and voiceless consonant clusters

Bassam: I spent my weekend braying*.

Lizz: Oh, why's that?

Bassam: Because of my religion.

Lizz: Oh, er, do donkeys feature a great deal in your religion?

Bassam: Eh?

I'm braying and praying baby!

* Cute donkey braying

Now, although I absolutely love the mental image of my serious business student spending the weekend dressed as a donkey and braying, this is clearly not what he meant. The phonetic problem here is two-fold:

1. The /p/ pronounced without aspiration and therefore sounding to an English ear like /b/
2. The following /r/ remaining voiced in its articulation.

Aspiration

Aspiration is the little puff of air from the glottis, which is released when the lips are parted in the production of an English /p/. In fact, all voiceless English plosives /p t k/ are aspirated. Try saying 'pin, tin, kin' and notice the little release of air that follows the consonant before the onset of the vowel.

In many of the world's languages /p/ is pronounced without aspiration. The result to an English ear is what sounds like our /b/. Try it for yourself, again say 'pin, tin, kin' but try not to release the puff of air. You'll probably end up with something similar to 'bin, din, gin' (/ɡɪn /, not the drink, that is). Unfortunately, this can cause heavily accented English in speakers and some confusion for those on the receiving end.

Approximants following voiceless English plosives

The second problem with Bassam's production was that the /r/ following the /p/ remained voiced. This may sound ok to you, but now try saying these words 'pray, pluck, pure, true, tube, twins, cry, cluck, queen, queue'. Hopefully you noticed that the second sound in each word actually loses its voicing since the preceding voiceless consonant, with its aspiration, has a carry-over effect to the normally voiced English approximants /r l j w/.

Practise

Aspiration

First, deal with the aspiration problem. I like to get my student to hold up a piece of A4 paper so that the top edge is about 3cm in front of their mouth. Now they should try to say /p t k/ but think about pushing a little /h/ out after the release. If they do this well, the paper should move. If they're still having problems, encourage them to put a hand on their diaphragm and feel the outward breath at they practise.

TIP: You can turn this into a game if you like. Keep moving the paper further and further from their mouth and see if they can make it move. Have a class competition - but make sure you're ready for all the spit and possible fainting that comes with it!

Consonant clusters

Once they've got to grips with aspiration, start on the consonant clusters:

/pr pl pj tr tw tj kr kl kw kj/

Encourage them to whisper the clusters. You can add to this by making them put a couple of fingers over their glottis to see whether they are producing any vibrations. If they are, the clusters are not correct. Keep practising until there is no vibration present.

TIP: You could get your students to do this in pairs, listening out for any signs of voicing. If the class is particularly friendly, why not get them to feel for vibrations on each other's glottis. If any of your students show signs of strangling their partner, stop the activity*.

Why, you little ****!!

* depending on which student is on the receiving end, of course ;)

Final Steps

Now encourage your students to add the clusters to the words in the list:

 'pray, pluck, pure, true, tube, twins, cry, cluck, queen, queue'. 

Cluster Bingo!

To make this fun, use the words in a game of Bingo. 

1. Get each student to draw a 3x3 grid and choose nine of the words to put into it in any order.
2. Call out the words at random until one student has two lines of three. 
3. They can only win the game if they then read out the words to you with the correct cluster pronunciation and audible aspiration.