syllable Segment of speech usually consisting of a vowel with or without accompanying consonant sounds (e.g., a , I , out , too , cap , snap , check ). A syllabic consonant, like the final n sound in button and widen , also constitutes a syllable.

Hi everyone! I've read people can omit /t/ sounds when speaking in informal situations. Could you help me? What do you know about this? Is this true? There's even a rule saying " In informal speech we sometimes omit the /t/ when the

The explanation (which I find convincing, but your mileage may vary) is that the puff of air is *unvoiced*, whereas all vowels are, by definition, voiced to some extent. If you try the hand-over-mouth experiment with the word "peak", for

It seems that an aspirate has the air flowing *while* the consonant is being pronounced, without there necessarily even being a closure that's released. No, an aspirate consonant has a distinct sound of escaping air before the following

{d} is defined by the International Phonetic Association to be ... it seems doubtful that the consonant should be called plosive. It seems to me that you're confusing plosives and aspirates. I don't think so. The New Shorter Oxford says

"'Plosive' is a relative term" means that there's no reason ... one time to another over a continuous range of values. It can't do that because if consonants were that loosely defined they'd be indistinguishable. It

"'Plosive' is a relative term" means that there's no reason ... one time to another over a continuous range of values. It can't do that because if consonants were that loosely defined they'd be indistinguishable. It

{d} is defined by the International Phonetic Association to be a voiced alveolar plosive. (See http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/pulmonic.html .) Now "plosive" is ... sound, it's so small as to be hardly noticeable, and it seems

"'Plosive' is a relative term" means that there's no reason the volume of the burst can't vary from one person to another, from one sound to another, and from one time to another over a continuous range of values. It

Now "plosive" is a relative term. In plosives, the airstream is completely blocked and then released, producing a temporary burst of overpressure. "'Plosive' is a relative term" means that there's no reason the