:Aspiration:

Pronunciation GB: ˌæspɪˈreɪʃn (adjective ˈæspɪreɪtɪd), GA: adjective ˈæspɪreɪt̬ɪd

(1)
Weak cavity friction following the release of a sound, usually a plosive. Aspiration for plosives is associated with a relatively long voice onset time. Aspiration is symbolised by a small raised "h" following the symbol for the sound concerned. In many accents of English, voiceless plosive phonemes have aspirated allophones when initial in a stressed syllable. Some languages, Thai is an example, have contrasts between aspirated and unaspirated plosives. Languages where aspiration is contrastive for sound types other than plosives are rare. Modern Standard Chinese is a language with contrastively aspirated and unaspirated affricates, and Burmese has aspirated and unaspirated voiceless fricatives.


Speech pressure and laryngograph waveforms for apʰa


(2)
The traditional name of one of the word-initial consonant mutations of Irish. The name is inappropriate, as the result of the mutation is never, in fact, an aspirated sound. The changes are rather complex, mainly because of the interaction of the mutation with the slender or broad nature of the consonant involved.  What follows is a somewhat simplified account. The mutation occurs in a number grammatical environments, including, for feminine nouns, after the definite article in the nominative or accusative case, for masculine nouns, after the definite article in the genitive case, for all nouns, after the the possessive adjectives mo (my), do (your) and a (his), for all verbs in the past tense.  The changes that occur are:

  1. f is deleted
  2. p is replaced by f
  3. m and b are replaced by v if slender and by w if broad
  4. t and s are replaced by ç and by h if broad
  5. d and ɡ are replaced by j if slender and by ɣ if broad