Learn English – How to differentiate p from b

pronunciation

“Tony Abbott and his Canadian counterpart, Stephen Harper, have condemned carbon taxes during their first bilateral talks in Ottawa this morning.” (part of Aussie ABC audio; Original source)

I hear Stephen Harber instead of Stephen Harper. Is the presenter really pronouncing Harber? Or am I not differentiating voiced, b, from unvoiced, p? Which is the case? If I’m wrong, would you let me know how to differentiate between the two?

Best Answer

  • You might only be able to tell through context
  • The name Harper is more likely than the name Harber
  • Australian English is non-rhotic, which makes the /p/ less distinct
  • If your native language isn't English, or even Australian/NZ English, you might be less attuned to these differences, and you mightn't know what common/usual names are

If you're interested in a slightly more technical explanation...

The reason that we're hearing it as /b/ rather than /p/ is likely because the two things that we usually look for are absent:

  • It's surrounded by voiced segments (vowels)
  • There's no aspiration

What you have below are a spectrogram (above) and waveform (middle) with annotations (below) for Harper.

The main issue with stops - of any kind - is that they're relatively boring sounds, there's not much happening in them.

You can see striations at the base of the spectrogram where he pronounces the vowels, but not during /h/ and /p/ - these indicate voicing.

Also, Australian English is non-rhotic - the /r/ in Harper isn't pronounced. Were this pronounced by an American English speaker, for instance, where the /r/ is pronounced, the /p/ is much more obvious and distinct.

"Harper"

Obviously, this kind of answer is more at home on Linguistics.se, but I thought I'd throw this in because I find it really interesting, and it might actually be of use to any language learners who happen to be trained in some articulatory/perceptory phonetics.

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