[General] stable/staple, same pronunciation ?

LiuJing said:

Do you pronounce stable and staple identically?

Thank you.

stable - definition of stable by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.
staple - definition of staple by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.

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emsr2d2 said:

The pronunciation matches the spelling. The only difference in pronunciation is between the "p" and the "b" in the middle of the word. Apart from that different sound in the middle, the words would be pronounced identically.

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LiuJing said:

If you click the staple link and its pronunciation box, you will hear p sound changed to b sound. Is that because of something similar to 'speak pronounced as sbeak' in this case?

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emsr2d2 said:

The pronunciations you linked to do not sound the same. Admittedly, the difference between the "p" and the "b" is very slight (I personally don't think that the recording of the word "stable" is very good!), but they are different.

The "p" should not sound like a "b" as it does in "speak" as you correctly identified. Nor should the "b" sound like a "p".

Stable and staple should be easily differentiated when spoken.

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LiuJing said:

You are right. I was misled by the initial link. I have found another link that pronounces staple's p as the original sound [p]. Thank you.
staple?????_??_???????

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