The voiced labiodental nasal 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. 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 . The IPA symbol is a lowercase letter ''m'' with a leftward hook protruding from the lower right of the letter. Occasionally it is instead transcribed as an with a dental

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

: (for example in

extIPA The Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for Disordered Speech, commonly abbreviated extIPA , are a set of letters and diacritics devised by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association to augment the Internati ...

, where the two transcriptions are presented as variants). The

labiodental In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth, such as and . In English, labiodentalized /s/, /z/ and /r/ are characteristic of some individuals; these may be written . Labiodental consonants in ...

pronunciation of is very similar to that of the bilabial nasal , but instead of the lips touching each other, the lower lip touches the upper teeth. The position of the lips and teeth is generally the same as for the production of the labiodental

fricative A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in ...

s and , though air escapes between the lip and the teeth in the case of the fricatives. Although commonly appearing in languages, it is overwhelmingly an

allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plos ...

restricted to a position before the labiodental consonants and . A phonemic has only been reported for the Kukuya language, which contrasts it with and is "accompanied by strong protrusion of both lips". It is before and before and , perhaps because labialization is constrained by the spread front vowels; it does not occur before the back (rounded) vowels and . It is doubted by some scholars that true closure can be made by a labiodental gesture because of gaps between the incisors, which for many speakers would allow air to flow during the occlusion. This is particularly pertinent considering that one of the Kukuya words with this consonant, , means a 'gap between filed incisors,' a practice of the local people. The might therefore be better characterized as a labiodental nasal

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 ...

than as a nasal occlusive. Nonetheless, is extremely common around the world phonetically, as it is the universal allophone of and a very common allophone of before the labiodental fricatives and , as for example in English ''comfort'' and ''circumvent'', and, for many people, ''infinitive'' and ''invent''. In the Angami language, occurs as an allophone of before . In Drubea, is reported as an allophone of before nasal vowels. A proposal to retire the letter was made in the run-up to the

Kiel Convention The International Phonetic Alphabet was created soon after the International Phonetic Association was established in the late 19th century. It was intended as an international system of phonetic transcription for oral languages, originally for ...

of 1989, with the labiodental nasal to be transcribed solely by , but the proposal was defeated in committee.''JIPA'' 18(2) p.85.

Features

Features of the voiced labiodental nasal:

Occurrence

Phonemic is extremely rare. As an allophone of nasal consonants before or , however, is very common.

Features

Occurrence

See also

References

Bibliography

External links