phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

, a bilabial consonant is a

labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. The two common labial articulations are bilabials, articulated using both lips, and labiodentals, articulated with the lower lip against the upper teeth, b ...

articulated An articulated vehicle is a vehicle which has a permanent or semi-permanent pivot joint in its construction, allowing it to turn more sharply. There are many kinds, from heavy equipment to buses, trams and trains. Steam locomotives were sometim ...

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 The Tlingit ( or ; also spelled Tlinkit) are indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their language is the Tlingit language (natively , pronounced ),

Chipewyan The Chipewyan ( , also called ''Denésoliné'' or ''Dënesųłı̨né'' or ''Dënë Sųłınë́'', meaning "the original/real people") are a Dene Indigenous Canadian people of the Athabaskan language family, whose ancestors are identified ...

, Oneida, and Wichita.

Varieties

The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are: Owere Igbo has a six-way contrast among bilabial stops: .

Other varieties

The extensions to the IPA also define a () for smacking the lips together. A lip-smack in the non-percussive sense of the lips noisily parting would be .Heselwood (2013: 121) The

IPA chart The following is the chart of the International Phonetic Alphabet, a standardized system of phonetic symbols devised and maintained by the International Phonetic Association. It is not a complete list of all possible speech sounds in the world's l ...

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

References

Citations

Sources