"Pin" or "bin": p and b
P and b are made in the same place, and a listener uses them to tell "pin" from "bin", "pie" from "buy", "park" from "bark" and "rope" from "robe".
For both, your lips close, hold the air for a moment and let it go. B has your voice on; p has no voice. At the start of a word or a stressed syllable, an English p also comes out with a puff of air, and a b has none.
After an s the puff goes away, so the p of "spin" has none. Speakers of some first languages make every p with little or no puff, and a listener may then hear a b: "pin" becomes "bin". The sources are listed below.
Both come up all the time: "people", "put", "up" and "help" have p; "be", "but", "about" and "job" have b. The drill below starts with single words, then two short sentences.
Your mouth, from the side
How to make it
- Close both lips gently, as if you were about to hum, but make no sound yet.
- Let a little air build up behind your closed lips.
- For p, open your lips and let the air burst out with no voice: a small puff, then the vowel.
- For b, close your lips the same way, then open them with your voice on and no puff: the vowel starts at once.
In one line: Close your lips, then open them with a small puff of air and no voice: hold your hand in front of your mouth and feel the puff on "pin", not on "bin".
Check yourself
Hold your hand or a sheet of paper close to your mouth and say "pin, bin, pin, bin". On "pin" you feel a puff that moves the paper; on "bin" almost nothing. If your hand feels nothing on "pin", a listener may hear "bin".
Hear the difference
Press a word to hear it in the model voice. The two words of a pair differ only in this sound: listen to both, then say the first one yourself.
Who often swaps it
Many first languages do not have this sound, or have one sound where English has two, and their speakers reach for the nearest sound they know. That is how an accent works, not a fault. These are patterns the sources describe, never a rule about any one speaker.
Practice "pin" or "bin"
Listen to each word, then say it. An AI says what it heard, sound by sound, and how to make the sound. 3 free tries a day.
- An AI scores each try, not a person. Each score is a practice estimate.
- Scored against American English.
- Practice, not therapy: for a voice or speech problem, see a speech-language pathologist.
- The model voice is a computer voice, in American English.
The words
1 of 8
pin
2 of 8
pet
3 of 8
pie
4 of 8
park
5 of 8
pear
6 of 8
rope
7 of 8
Put the pen in the pail.
8 of 8
Pat has a pet pig.
Sources
How each sound is made, and who often swaps it, as these sources describe it.
- Voiceless bilabial plosive (Wikipedia), read 2026-10-23
- Voiced bilabial plosive (Wikipedia), read 2026-10-23
- Aspirated consonant (Wikipedia), read 2026-10-23
- Non-native pronunciations of English, section Vietnamese (Wikipedia), read 2026-10-21
- Non-native pronunciations of English, section Portuguese (Wikipedia), read 2026-10-21
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