How to pronounce the P sound /p/

1. 1Press both lips together and hold the air behind them.
2. 2Build a little pressure — your cheeks should feel it.
3. 3Pop the lips open so the air escapes in one puff.
4. 4Keep the voice off: a hand on your throat feels nothing until the vowel starts.
5. 5At the start of a stressed word the puff is strong enough to move a sheet of paper.

• Peter put the paper cup on top of the pile.

• Please stop pushing the puppy off the porch.

Each of these is two words separated by exactly one sound. If a listener hears the wrong one, the problem is the contrast, not the effort.

Nothing here is about ability. Every one of these is a sound system doing exactly what it was built to do, applied to a language that asks for something else.

• HindiUrdu

  Hindi and Urdu have both an unaspirated and an aspirated p, and the unaspirated one is the default, so English 'pen' can sound like 'ben' to an English ear; use the aspirated one word-initially.

• Tamil

  Tamil treats p and b as one sound whose voicing depends on position, so the English contrast has to be learned as a new distinction rather than a habit.

• Korean

  Korean has three p-type sounds sorted by aspiration and tension rather than by voicing, so the English p/b contrast has to be rebuilt around voicing.

• Vietnamese

  Vietnamese uses /p/ only at the end of a syllable and leaves it unreleased, so word-initial p in 'people' needs building from scratch.

• Thai

  Thai has both p and pʰ, so the sound itself is easy, but a final p is unreleased in Thai and English listeners expect to hear the release in 'cup'.

• Spanish

  Spanish /p/ is never aspirated, so 'pin' and 'bin' can sound alike to an English listener; add the puff of air at the start of a word.

• French

  French /p/ has no aspiration either, so word-initial p can read as b; a visible puff fixes it without changing anything else.

• Italian

  Italian /p/ is unaspirated and Italian words rarely end in a consonant, so final p in 'stop' often picks up a small vowel after it.

• Russian

  Russian /p/ is unaspirated and can be palatalised before front vowels, so 'pit' may sound softened; keep the tongue out of it and add the puff.

• Arabic

  Most spoken Arabic varieties have no /p/, so it is commonly replaced by /b/ and 'park' comes out as 'bark'; the fix is to switch the voice off and let the lips pop.