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 | ||
| m̥ | 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 |
| pʼ | bilabial ejective stop | Adyghe | пӀэ | [pʼa] | meat |
| ɸʼ | bilabial ejective fricative | Yuchi | |||
| ɓ̥ | voiceless bilabial implosive | Serer | |||
| ɓ | voiced bilabial implosive | Jamaican Patois | beat | [ɓiːt] | beat |
|
k͡ʘ q͡ʘ ɡ͡ʘ ɢ͡ʘ ŋ͡ʘ ɴ͡ʘ |
bilabial clicks (many distinct consonants) | Nǁng | ʘoe | [k͡ʘoe] | meat |
Owere Igbo has a six-way contrast among bilabial stops: [p pʰ ɓ̥ b b̤ ɓ].
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.