The voiced bilabial fricative is a type of

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

al sound, used in some spoken

language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

s. 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 ...

that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is B. The official symbol is the

Greek letter The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...

beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; or ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represe ...

. This letter is also often used to represent the bilabial

approximant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do prod ...

, though that is more precisely written with a lowering diacritic, that is . That sound may also be transcribed as an advanced labiodental approximant , in which case the diacritic is again frequently omitted, since no contrast is likely. It has been proposed that either a turned , reversed or affricate can be used as a dedicated symbol for the bilabial approximant, but despite occasional usage none of them have gained general acceptance. It is extremely rare for a language to make a phonemic contrast between the voiced bilabial fricative and the bilabial approximant. The Mapos Buang language of

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; , fossilized , also known as Papua or historically ) is the List of islands by area, world's second-largest island, with an area of . Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is ...

contains this contrast. Its bilabial approximant is analyzed as filling a phonological gap in the labiovelar series of the consonant system rather than the bilabial series.

Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic languages, Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from ...

and

Proto-Italic The Proto-Italic language is the ancestor of the Italic languages, most notably Latin and its descendants, the Romance languages. It is not directly attested in writing, but has been reconstructed to some degree through the comparative method. ...

are also reconstructed as having had this contrast, albeit with being an allophone for another consonant in both cases. In

Bashkir language Bashkir ( , ) or Bashkort (, ) is a Turkic languages, Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak languages, Kipchak branch. It is official language#Political alternatives, co-official with Russian language, Russian in Bashkortostan. Bashkir has ap ...

, it is an intervocal allophone of , and it is contrastive with : , . The bilabial fricative is diachronically unstable (likely to be considerably varied between dialects of a language that makes use of it) and is likely to shift to ., citing The sound is not the primary realization of any sound in English dialects except for

Chicano English Chicano English, or Mexican-American English, is a dialect of American English spoken primarily by Mexican Americans (sometimes known as Chicanos), particularly in the Southwestern United States ranging from Texas to California,Newman, Mi ...

, but it can be produced by approximating the normal English between the lips; it can also sometimes occur as an allophone of after bilabial consonants.

Features

Features of the voiced bilabial fricative:

Occurrence

Voiced bilabial fricative

Bilabial approximant

Notes

References

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External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Voiced Bilabial Fricative Fricative consonants Bilabial consonants Approximant consonants Pulmonic consonants Voiced oral consonants