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Glite Dictionary
unaspirated

unaspirated

8.2
A consonant sound that has no strong puff of air
  • adjective
  • /ˌʌnˈæspəˌreɪtɪd/
  • Specialized
translation icon : no aspirado
  • When comparing languages, some consonants are unaspirated, such as the k in 'skill' versus the aspirated k in 'kill'.

Examples

  • So if you give children an aspirated stop and an unaspirated stop, they can distinguish those.

  • Thus, all normal English speakers are systematically incapable of hearing or producing at will the difference between aspirated and unaspirated voiceless sounds.

    Academic text (2006)

  • Given that onoma did not begin with an 'h', the 't' of meta remained unaspirated in the compound.

    Academic text (2001)

  • In English, the letter 'p' is often unaspirated when it appears after an 's', as in the word spring.

  • The sound of t in the word 'stop' is unaspirated, meaning it is pronounced without a burst of breath.

Antonyms

aspirated
  • Specialized
6.7

A speech sound that you make with a strong burst of air, for example the t in 'top'

How Aspirated

aspirated
  • Specialized
6.7
unaspirated
  • Specialized
8.2

Surface Forms

unaspirated positive

Morphology

unaspirated = aspirated (transparent) = un + aspirate + ed

The adjective is formed by adding the productive negation prefix 'un-' to 'aspirated', so the meaning is directly the negation of 'aspirated'.

Etymology

Unaspirated breaks into un- ('not') and aspirate from a root meaning 'to breathe', the same idea you see in inspire. So unaspirated means 'not breathed', a sound made without a strong burst of breath after a consonant.