IPA reference · consonant
p — voiceless bilabial plosive
Both lips close completely, pressure builds, and the closure releases without vocal fold vibration.
Also called: voiceless bilabial stop, p sound
How to make the voiceless bilabial plosive
Press the lips together, stop the airflow entirely, then release. Whether it comes with a puff of air (aspiration) is the crucial variable: English aspirates it at the start of a stressed syllable, most other languages do not.
English reference points: pin, spin, top. If you speak English natively you already produce this sound — the work is recognising it and placing it where the target language wants it.
Languages that use it
Sounds it gets confused with
Most pronunciation errors are not random — they are a substitution of the nearest sound the speaker already owns. These are the usual substitutions for p, and each one is a minimal-pair drill waiting to happen.
In languages without aspiration, an unaspirated /p/ sounds like an English /b/ to English ears.
What this means for learners
English speakers over-aspirate /p/ in French, Spanish, Italian and Russian, where it should be released cleanly. The paper test settles it: hold a sheet in front of your mouth and it should not move.
Teaching this sound
Describing a sound in words gets a student roughly half the way there. The other half is hearing it produced correctly, immediately after producing it incorrectly, with both versions available to replay. That is the argument for recording during the lesson rather than after it: the student leaves with your model of p attached to the actual words they got wrong, not to an abstract chart.
Frequently asked questions
What sound does the IPA symbol p make?
p is the voiceless bilabial plosive. Both lips close completely, pressure builds, and the closure releases without vocal fold vibration. In English you can hear it in: pin, spin, top.
How do you pronounce p?
Press the lips together, stop the airflow entirely, then release. Whether it comes with a puff of air (aspiration) is the crucial variable: English aspirates it at the start of a stressed syllable, most other languages do not.
Which languages have the voiceless bilabial plosive?
Among the languages covered here: French (papa, “dad”); Spanish (poco, “a little”); Thai (ปา, “to throw”).
What is the difference between p and b?
In languages without aspiration, an unaspirated /p/ sounds like an English /b/ to English ears.