Bilabial consonant

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

Transcription

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

IPA	Description	Example
		Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
	bilabial nasal	English	man	[mæn]	man
	voiceless bilabial stop	English	spin	[spɪn]	spin
	voiced bilabial stop	English	bed	[bɛd]	bed
	voiceless bilabial fricative	Japanese	富士山 (fujisan)	[ɸuʑisaɴ]	Mount Fuji
	voiced bilabial fricative	Ewe	ɛʋɛ	[ɛ̀βɛ̀]	Ewe
	bilabial approximant	Spanish	lobo	[loβ̞o]	wolf
	bilabial trill	Nias	simbi	[siʙi]	lower jaw
	bilabial ejective	Adyghe	пӀэ	[pʼa]	meat
ʘ̬ ʘ̃ ʘ̥̃ʰ ʘ̃ˀ	bilabial click release (many distinct consonants)	Nǁng	ʘoe	[ʘoe]	meat

Owere Igbo has a six-way contrast among bilabial stops: [p pʰ ɓ̥ b b̤ ɓ]. Approximately 0.7% of the world's languages lack bilabial consonants altogether; these include Tlingit, Chipewyan, Oneida, and Wichita.

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

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

See also

• Place of articulation
• List of phonetics topics

References

General references

• McDorman, Richard E. (1999). Labial Instability in Sound Change: Explanations for the Loss of /p/. Chicago: Organizational Knowledge Press. ISBN 0-967-25370-5.