I was wondering if someone could help me clear up some confusion

Sometimes when I hear people speaking Japanese in videos, I hear them swap the
k/g consonants, as well as the d/t consonants.. Like よろしく sounds like exactly
what it looks like alone, but adding おねがいします makes the く sound like ご.. I get
that the u turns silent but I don't get the consonant switching.

The same goes for なかった where it sounds more like ながっだ in the audio provided
here <https://elon.io/learn-japanese-hepburn/lexicon/26888/anata-wa-heta-ja-
nakatta-desu>.

Is this something to do with phonetics and is there a specific spot where the
tongue touches when Japanese people pronounce these two to make them sound
very similar? I know t/d make use of the back of the top of your teeth.
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2020-01-30T19:40:07.370
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pronunciation phonology phonetics
Pronunciation question for consonants k/g and t/d
If your native language is English, you may find that although the contrast
between the pairs /t d/, /p b/, and /k g/ is nominally one of
[voicing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_\(phonetics\)), in practice it
is frequently one of
[aspiration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirated_consonant). The Japanese
pairs are more of a true voiced and voiceless set, with /p t k/ having less
aspiration, thus sounding somewhat like /b d g/ to English speakers. (On a
related note, as a child I was confused that words such as 'spin', 'star', and
'scare' were not spelt 'sbin', 'sdar', and 'sgare'.)
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2020-01-30T19:46:31.503
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2020-01-30T19:46:31.503
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answer