non-aspirated ,t,

[pinguin]

Hello, I am a native English speaker attempting to improve my Finnish pronunciation. Right now I am working on the letter ,t, which in Finnish, of course, is not aspirated. But I have no idea how to NOT aspirate a letter. Any tips? Kiitos.

[Varislintu]

Just don't "spit out" as much air when you say the t. Keep it "contained", if you will. To me, the English 't' has a bit of an 's' in it. Just leave that out .

(I think learners might give you better help .)

[Virankannos]

Actually the English t is not always aspirated. For example, think about words like "light" or "stick" and compare them to, say "toy" and "potato". They are pronounced [laɪt], [stɪk], [tʰɔɪ] and [pəˈtʰeɪtʰəʊ] respectively. The latter two words have aspirated t's in them, the former two don't (because the t is at the end of the syllable in "light", and after s in "stick"). When speaking Finnish, you should try to shed these rules from your mind and pronounce all t's like in "light" or "stick"

Naturally everyone would understand you even if you aspirate your t's, but it would sound foreign. Also, the same rule applies for k and p which are never aspirated either.

[Czwartek]

Not sure if you're still working on this, but my advice is to pronounce a 't' followed by a vowel and notice at what point you begin the vowel. If it's aspirated, the vowel will begin just after the aspiration. What you need to do is begin the vowel just after the 't', before any air can leave your mouth. At first it will sound much like a voiced equivalent 'd', but with practice you will learn to control the timing of the vowel onset to contrast them.

The same is true of the other voiceless plosives ('k' and 'p' being the ones used in Finnish). Their voiced equivalents are 'g' and 'b', so they may sound similar to these sounds at first.

And Varislintu is right. Many English speakers pronounce 't' as an affricate (with a slight 's' sound afterwards). Try to detect if you're doing this so you can control it when speaking Finnish.

[JackFrost]

It's a matter of tongue position. Say the t as in "hit". You'll see your tongue is touching the back of the front teeth. Say the t as in "tick", you'll see your tongue is moving forward against the roof of the mouth to make a pocket of air to make the t aspirated. The pocket of air would be on the middle of the tongue against the mid-hard palate just before you eject the aspirated t sound. You don't want to do that for sure, so you'll want to keep the tongue at the back of the front teeth at all times in Finnish.

So, keep it against the back of the front teeth without pressing against the mid-hard palate (to make a pocket of air) and I think you'll get it just right: unaspirated t!