English How to Pronounce B and P consonants American Accent
The P and B consonants. These two sounds are
paired together because they take the same
mouth position. P is unvoiced, pp, meaning
only air passes through your mouth. And B
is voiced, bb, meaning, uh, uh, bb, you’re
making a sound with your vocal cords. To make
this sound, the lips will stay together while
the teeth part a little bit, pp, bb. These
are stop consonants. In stop consonants, there
are two parts. There is a stop of the airflow,
and a release. So the stop of the airflow
happens, pp, as the lips remain closed, and
the release when they part and the air comes
through. Let’s look at the nature of a stop
consonant in the sample word nap. Na–, the
lips are together, cutting off the airflow,
nap, pp, and they part, the air is released.
Stop consonants at the ends of words or syllables
are sometimes not released. In other words,
there’s just the first part, the stop of air
flow. Let’s take for example the sentence
I’m going up later. I’m going up later. So
the lips came together to make the P – I’m
going up later – but when they opened and
the sound continued, it simply went into the
L consonant sound, which was next, without
the release. I’m going up, I’m going up, I’m
going up later. Here is the sound from the
front, where the lips are together but the
teeth are slightly parted. That is why it
doesn’t look relaxed. And here from the side.
Again, you can see this tension in the chin
as the teeth are slightly parted even though
the lips are closed. Here, parts of the mouth
are drawn in. The soft palate is raised in
this sound, and the tongue itself raises just
a little bit, but the tip of the tongue is
still touching the bottom front teeth. Sample
words: pad, bad, pot, bought. Sample sentence:
Pick a big print for the bedspread. Now you
will see this sample sentence up close and
in slow motion both straight on and from an
angle, so you can really study how the mouth
moves when making this sound. Pick, the lips
press together as the jaw drops slightly.
A big, again, the lips press together as the
jaw drops. Print, again the P sound. Tongue
goes up to make the T. Lip comes up to make
the F in ‘for’. The, lips together, bb, bedspread,
and here again to make the P in spread. Jaw
drops to make the ‘eh’ as in ‘bed’ vowel sound,
and the tip of the tongue up to make the D.
And here from an angle. The lips press together
even as the jaw drops and the teeth part.
Pick, the ‘ih’ as in ‘sit’ sound. Pick a big,
again the lips come together for the B, big.
And again for the P, print. Tongue up for
the T. For the. Lips together for the B in
bed-, and again for the p in -spread. The
‘eh’ as in ‘bed’ and the tongue up to make
that D. That’s it, and thanks so much for
using Rachel’s English.