Bilabial consonant

In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a labial consonant articulated with both lips.

Frequency

Bilabial consonants are very common across languages. Only around 0.7% of the world's languages lack bilabial consonants altogether, including Tlingit, Chipewyan, Oneida, and Wichita, though all of these have a labial–velar approximant /w/.

Varieties

The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are:

IPA Description Example
Language Orthography IPA Meaning
voiceless bilabial nasal Hmong Hmoob [m̥ɔ̃́] Hmong
m voiced bilabial nasal English man [mæn] man
p voiceless bilabial plosive English spin [spɪn] spin
b voiced bilabial plosive English bed [bɛd] bed
p͡ɸ voiceless bilabial affricate Kaingang fy [ˈp͡ɸɤ] 'seed'
b͡β voiced bilabial affricate Shipibo boko [ˈb͡βo̽ko̽] 'small intestine'
ɸ voiceless bilabial fricative Japanese 富士山 (fujisan) [ɸuʑisaɴ] Mount Fuji
β voiced bilabial fricative Ewe ɛʋɛ [ɛ̀βɛ̀] Ewe
β̞ bilabial approximant Spanish lobo [loβ̞o] wolf
ⱱ̟ voiced bilabial flap Mono vwa [ⱱ̟a] 'send'
ʙ̥ voiceless bilabial trill Pará Arára [ʙ̥uta] 'to throw away'
ʙ voiced bilabial trill Nias simbi [siʙi] lower jaw
bilabial ejective stop Adyghe пӀэ [a] meat
ɸʼ bilabial ejective fricative Yuchi asę [ɸ’asẽ] 'good evening!'
ɓ̥ voiceless bilabial implosive Serer [example needed]
ɓ voiced bilabial implosive Jamaican Patois beat [ɓiːt] beat
k͡ʘq͡ʘ
ɡ͡ʘɢ͡ʘ
ŋ͡ʘɴ͡ʘ
bilabial clicks (many distinct consonants) Nǁng ʘoe [k͡ʘoe] meat

Owere Igbo has a six-way contrast among bilabial stops: [ppʰɓ̥bb̤ɓ].[citation needed]

Other varieties

The extensions to the IPA also define a bilabial percussive ([ʬ] ) for smacking the lips together. A lip-smack in the non-percussive sense of the lips noisily parting would be [ʬ↓].

The IPA chart shades out bilabial lateral consonants, which is sometimes read as indicating that such sounds are not possible. The fricatives [ɸ] and [β] are often lateral, but since no language makes a distinction for centrality, the allophony is not noticeable.

See also



This page was last updated at 2024-03-15 10:02 UTC. Update now. View original page.

All our content comes from Wikipedia and under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.


Top

If mathematical, chemical, physical and other formulas are not displayed correctly on this page, please useFirefox or Safari