aspiration is a feature in languages where saying a consonant gives out a puff of air. for example, if you dangle a piece of paper in front of your mouth, you will see it move if you say an aspirated, or breathy, consonant. if the paper does not move, then it is unaspirated, or not breathy. in english, voiceless stops and fricatives that happen at the beginning of a word are aspirated, which are the sounds 'p', 't', 'k', and 'ch' (which are written as /p/, /t/, /k/, /t͡ʃ/ in ipa in the same order). in ipa, aspirated sounds can be written with an ʰ symbol afterwards, as in /pʰ/, /tʰ/, /kʰ/, and /t͡ʃʰ/. for example, the first sound in the words "pick", "tick", "kick", and "chick" are all aspirated. in ipa, they are written as /pʰɪk/, /tʰɪk/, /kʰɪk/, and /t͡ʃʰɪk/ in the same order. however, voiceless stops and fricatives that appear after the first sound are unaspirated. for example, while the /p/ in "pit" is aspirated, the /p/ in "spit" and the /p/ in "tip" are not, so they would not be marked with an ʰ symbol afterwards. below are more examples of aspiration.