American English is a language with two-way contrasts.
In initial position American English and German are fairly similar to Cantonese (according
to Catford with somewhat weaker aspiration for the voiceless aspirated stops,
though this is not apparent here). However, as the non-aspirated stops may be
slightly voiced (i.e have a short voicing lead) and are generally fairly fully
voiced intervocalically, they are assigned the symbol for voiced stops.
