265: B and P Aug 30, 2015

Certain two phonemes are more similar than others. The letters 't' and 'd', for example, are more close in their respective sounds than that of a hard 'c' and an 'h'. The most similar pair of all the phonemes used in English are 'b' and a hard 'p', only differing by a few fractions of a millisecond in the end of their aspiration. The difference between their sounds is so minute that some animals, including dogs, cannot hear it, however, cats are able to distinguish between the two. The tiny difference is how 'description' (with a 'p') can be a sensible derivative of 'describe' (with a 'b').