In
phonetics,
preaspiration (sometimes spelled
pre-aspiration) is a period of
voicelessness or
aspiration preceding the closure of a voiceless
obstruent, basically equivalent to an -like sound preceding the obstruent. In other words, when an obstruent is preaspirated, the
glottis is opened for some time before the obstruent closure. To mark preaspiration using the
International Phonetic Alphabet, the diacritic for regular aspiration, , can be placed before the preaspirated consonant. However, Ladefoged and Maddieson prefer to use a simple cluster notation, e.g. instead of .