Learning “ཀ་ ཁ་ ག་ ང་” can be very daunting for beginners; often, even middling and advanced students may have trouble distinguishing between the sounds of the columns.
If you are a native English speaker, from a very young age, you have been habituated to distinguish between what linguists call “unvoiced” and “voiced” sounds. “K”, for example, is unvoiced and “g” is voiced. However, our use of aspiration is what linguists call “allophonic“—we treat the “k” sound in “skin” and “kin” as though they are the same sound.
They’re not. Here is the trick: put your hand up to your mouth as you say the words “skin” and “kin”—you’ll notice a puff of air escape for “kin”, but none for “skin”. The “k” in “skin” is unaspirated. Practice saying this “k” sound without the initial “s”.
As English speakers, we are naturally listening for the voicing of the letter—is it a “k” or a “g”? That’s the way our ear has been trained. But for Tibetan, it’s the wrong question. The question is, is it the “k” in “skin” or the “k” in “kin” (is it a ཀ་ or a ཁ་)? That is, is it unaspirated or aspirated?
Practice with other non-initial consonant sounds (sounds that don’t start a word). What other sounds do we already have in English that exist in Tibetan?