The consonants

The plosives

The voiceless velar plosive is usually affricated (released with audible friction at the point of articulation) in all positions. Alveolar [t] is affricated initially in stressed syllables, but usually voiced and tapped between sonorants in words such as getting, butter, bottle. The tapping may occur over word-boundaries as well as within words, both within a foot and over foot-boundaries. (A foot here is a sequence of a stressed syllable and any following unstressed syllables up to but not including the next stressed syllable.) It occurs over word-boundaries only where the /t/ is word-final, e.g. in get eggs. In a tall person, aspiration/affrication of /t/ blocks the tapping. There are some slight indications that a glottal plosive may be starting to replace this tap, but it is too soon to say whether this feature will spread. A glottal plosive [ʔ] is in free variation with an affricated plosive in final position. The bilabial [p] can be heard aspirated in all positions. Both [p] and [k] and also [ʧ] may get glottal reinforcement in word-final position, and this variant seems to be gaining ground rapidly, having been virtually unknown in the 1970s. After syllable-initial [s], [p, t, k] are unaspirated.

The so-called voiced plosives have very little voicing, and are distinguished from their voiceless counterparts mainly by their lack of aspiration/affrication. There may be no phonetic difference between an intervocalic /t/ and an intervocalic /d/, but this has not been carefully analyzed.