Re: Jaars IPA Helper

Paul Bennett wrote:

> Kinda useful, in a pinch, though the example voice sounds more to
> me like voiced/supervoiced pairs rather than unvoiced/voiced!
Remember that in English, our p/b, t/d, k/g pairs are really more
distinguished by aspiration or lack thereof (at least in initial
positions, which are what usually come to mind when you try to
consider a phoneme in the abstract) than by voice, and that our
"voiced" stops have very little voice to them compared to say, French
voiced stops.

For this reason, Navajo stops, which do not actually have a
voiced/unvoiced distinction but an aspirated/unaspirated distinction,
are transcribed with the p/b t/d k/g pairs, and it works remarkably
well (one just has to remember to aspirate medial/final p/t/ks as well
as initial).

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oice)