ords are brought tightly together, thus blocking off the air-stream to suddenly release the cords, a stop sound occurs--the glottal stop. In American English, it is found rather seldom, except in the case of sharp "attacks" to an opening vowel--and, by default, there is then no consonant at the beginning of a syllable--as in forcefully saying Aaron, leave me alone! In England, on the other hand, and in parts of Northern Ireland, the glottal stop is used as an accompaniment to the voiceless stops /p, t, k, tch in a stressed syllable. It is widely used in British English as an optical "catch" between adjacent vowels, as in co-operative and re-educate. By and large, however, the glottal stop is associated with English dialects, such as London Cockney and Glasgow speech. It is generally considered as substandard English pronunciation.
In phonetics, aspiration is the "articulation accompanied by an audible puff of breath, as in the h-sound of how, the k-sound of key" (Th
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