The voiced bilabial click is a
click consonant
Click consonants, or clicks, are speech sounds that occur as consonants in many languages of Southern Africa and in three languages of East Africa. Examples familiar to English-speakers are the '' tut-tut'' (British spelling) or '' tsk! tsk!' ...
found in some of the languages of southern Africa.
The symbol in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...
for a voiced bilabial click with a
velar rear articulation is or , commonly abbreviated to , or . For a click with a
uvular rear articulation, the equivalents are .
Sometimes the accompanying letter comes after the click letter, e.g. or ; this may be a simple orthographic choice, or it may imply a difference in the relative timing of the releases.
Features
Features of the voiced bilabial click:
Occurrence
Voiced bilabial clicks only occur in the
Tuu and
Kx'a families of southern Africa.
These sounds are extremely rare and many non-native speakers find it difficult to pronounce. Thus, these sounds are sometimes transliterated as a "g" and a "G" and are pronounced as
Velar and
Uvular Plosives
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases.
The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lip ...
.
References
{{IPA navigation
Bilabial consonants
Click consonants
Voiced oral consonants