Episode 365 of the Influency Podcast (host Hadar Shemesh) is a recorded live pronunciation lesson focused on the H sound and on aspiration of the plosive consonants P, T, and K. The host reviews when H must be pronounced (and five common exceptions: honor, honest, hour, heir, herbs—with regional variation for "herbs"), explains reduction of H in unstressed function words (he, her, him, his) in connected speech, and teaches that P/T/K are aspirated at the start of words or stressed syllables (producing a brief "H-like" puff). The episode includes practice instructions (lip/air pressure exercises), minimal-pair examples (pay vs. bay, cake vs. gate, sheep vs. ship, class vs. glass), and listener Q&A.
Chapters
Welcome to the Influency Podcast. I'm Hadar, and this is episode number 365. Today I'm going to share with you a recording of a live lesson that I delivered about three important sounds, the P, T, and K, when they appear at the beginning of words, also called the aspirated sounds. I don't know if you've noticed, but when those sounds appear at the beginning of a word or sometimes in the middle of the word, it sounds like they have a little H right after them. For example, pay and kiss. We're also going to talk about the H and when and how to use those aspirated sounds. I think you are going to love this episode. So let's listen.
Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining. Okay, so I want to quickly review the H lesson that I released and also talk about the P's, the T's and the K's. And I want to discuss that because one of my students had a great question about these sounds in relation to the H. So the H sound is a sound that it's supposed to be a consistent sound, and it usually is. It gets confusing to some speakers. Here's the thing. Some speakers don't really pronounce an H sound in their language. Does that sound familiar to all of you? French speakers or Spanish speakers or Hebrew speakers? So sometimes even if you do have an H sound, you don't actually pronounce it or you don't have to pronounce it. And if you don't pronounce it, it's not a big deal. In English, it is a big deal. When you have an H, you have to pronounce it unless it's a word that you shouldn't pronounce it unless it's a word that you can reduce the H. Okay. So basically, you always have to hear this whisper sound when there's an H. Except for the words that I talked about in my video, Honor, honest, air, erps, and ours. Yes. So we have these five words that have an H at the beginning, but we don't pronounce it. Do not pronounce it except for herbs that I think British speakers and South African speakers may pronounce it with an H, like herbs, and that's okay, but that's not the case for hours or honor and the other words. And then I said that sometimes when you have all these function words that begin with an H, like he, her, him, his, and have all of these words when they're not stressed, which is most of the time, then we reduce the age. So for example, ze coming. Ze coming. I'm not saying is he coming? Right? I'm saying Z. Z. I'm reducing these two words. Ze coming. Tell her I'm coming. Tell her, tell her. Right, I reduce the H here. Tell her I'm coming. Now, of course, I'm expecting you to repeat those words with me. If you are at a space that you can actually do that, Remember, it's not enough to just listen and to hear what I'm saying and to understand it. I mean, that's great. But I really, really want you to practice with me all the time. When you watch my videos, when you watch other teachers videos, always do it yourself and do it over and over and over and over again and even record yourself and listen to it. So you actually train yourself to make these sounds effortlessly and actually accurately. Because sometimes we think that we pronounce an H, but we don't really. So the only way to do it is actually by repetition and practice. Okay, so going back to the reduced words, we looked at examples like he and her. And there's also him. Tell him and give him. Give him this job. His call, right? It's his call. I don't have to pronounce the H here. His bag. But if I'm stressing it, it's his bag, right? I'm stressing the word his. Then I definitely want to pronounce the H here. I'm not going to say something like it is bad. No, that just doesn't sound right. Okay, so only when you're reducing those words, drop the H. If you're not sure, just go with pronouncing the H all the time. It's better than not pronouncing it when you have to pronounce it. Okay, so that's the thumb rule. If you're getting all confused, memorize the five words that you don't have to pronounce the H and just pronounce the H in all other cases. And then when you get more comfortable with it, then you can start reducing those H's in function words. Now what I really want to get into is the P's, T's and K's at the beginning of words. Now why is that? Because one of my students wrote to me, hey, I've been waiting for this lesson. Thank you so much. That's great. But I do notice that There are other Hs that are not spelled, but we actually hear them. So I was reading this and I was like, what is she talking about? And then she said, look, in the word apartment, there is an H after a P. And that's a brilliant observation. But although it sounds like an H, it's not an official H. And here's the thing. When Ps, Ks and Ts appear at the beginning of words or at the beginning of stressed syllables, they're aspirated, which means they have this little H sound right after. But it's a lot shorter than a regular H. It's almost unnoticeable. You can drop it and the word is going to be clear. But you do want to pronounce it because it makes you sound a lot better. Look at this example. Let's take the word pay versus pay. Do you hear the difference? Let me know in the comments. Do you hear the difference between. Again, they and pay? Do you hear the difference between take and take? So the second option is aspirated. So it feels like there is a little H. Can you make the difference? Can you create that little H sound? So what is this? What is the sound? Yes, it's a little H. But I want you to think of it as if you're holding your breath, closing your lips. Let's practice the P. For example, close your lips. Build up the tension. The pressure there, right? The air is pushing out, but you're holding it. And then you're releasing it with this strong puff, as if you're coming out of the water and you have to breathe out. Pay. It feels like there's. It's a little whisper. You're not even starting your voice. Pay. And that's the thing. Peace and not peace. People and not people. Pitch and not pitch. Because then it may sound to native speakers like B, I, T, C, H. We don't want that. When you have this whisper, it's very clear that it's a P sound. Pitch. Let's go to a sound represented with the letter C or the letter A, and sometimes with the letters ch, cake, car, Accomplishment. So it's at the beginning of words, but also at the beginning of stressed syllables. Okay, so all these three sounds, the P, Ts and K's, and in a second I'll talk about why these three sounds behave this way. When they're at the beginning of words and at the beginning of stressed syllables, then they're aspirated. There's this little H. Take T. Atomic. Fantastic. It's not fantastic. Fantastic. So you want to have this little whisper. These three sounds are plosives, which means that the sound is created by the breath being held and then released abruptly, immediately Unlike fricatives, like an F or a th, where the air comes out slowly and smoothly. Okay, so the P's and t's and k's are stop sounds, and they kind of like explode. And also they're voiceless. So if we think of the B sound, it doesn't happen with a B sound because we're activating the vocal cords for this one. Bay. Right. Bye. We can do PI, right? But if we say pie, can I get a piece of pie? Piece of pie. Right. We definitely hear this H sound. So let's have a little recap. You want to use the H when you're pronouncing P. P's, T's, and k's at the beginning of words and at the beginning of stressed sound syllables. Now, of course, when I'm saying k's, I'm not just talking about the letter K, I'm talking about the K sound. So, as in pay or apartment, as in cake or accomplish, and T as in tough and fantastic. Okay, good. So practice it for a little bit and let me know in the comments how it's going. And that's it. But now I'm going to go back to your questions. So, okay, if you don't use H speaking, why are you writing it? The question of all questions. English is not a phonetic language. Sometimes there are sounds and letters that maybe 300 years ago used to be pronounced or a thousand years ago, but it's no longer pronounced. Something happened, the language evolved. People tend to drop it in certain positions, and then it just disappeared from spoken English. And again, English is not a phonetic language. So anything can happen. And you have to remember that when you're reading, not just when we're talking about the age, when we're talking about everything. And also think about it. In English, there are 16 different vowels, vowel sounds, and there are only five vowel letters, right? A, O, U, I, E. But go try, represent 16 different vowel sounds with five letters. You're bound to have different sounds represented with the same letter. Okay. Because you don't have a lot of other options. And this is why English is not a phonetic language. So I always recommend to go back into listening to English before you trust the spelling or, you know, expect it to sound a certain way by the way it's written. Okay, I saw a question there. Glass and class. What's the difference? The first sound, a G sound versus a K sound. The only difference between those two sounds is the voicing. So for a sound, the back of the tongue is pressing against the upper palate. The soft palate closing and releasing. For a G sound, everything is happening the same way, but you're activating your vocal cords as well. So if you put your hands here, you can feel it vibrating in comparison to K. That's the only difference. You don't need to change anything inside your mouth or with your lips. So, class versus glass, These are. This is called minimal pairs or a minimal pair because it's one where you have two words that are almost the same except for one sound and that change in sound changes the meaning of the word. And for non native speakers, this is what you should go for. Practicing minimal pairs for pairs that are not distinguished in your language. So, for example, if there is no distinction between K and G in your language, these are the pairs that you want to practice, like Kate and Gate. Right. Another minimal pair. Or sheep and ship that I talk about quite often. Or run and one. Okay, another minimal pair. So you always want to compare it to sounds that are not distinguished in your language, but they're definitely distinguished in English. So that's it. Thank you so much for joining. If you have any questions for future lessons, future videos, please let me know in the comments. Goodbye for now. Bye.
