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

Some 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
p͜ɸ	voiceless bilabial affricate	Kaingang	fy	[ˈp͜ɸɤ]	'seed'
b͜β	voiced bilabial affricate	Shipibo	boko	[ˈb͜βo̽ko̽]	'small intestine'
ɸ	voiceless bilabial fricative	Japanese	富士山 (fujisan)	[ɸɯʑisaɴ]	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	ḟasę	[ɸ’asẽ]	'good evening!'
ɓ̥	voiceless bilabial implosive	Kaqchikel	b'ojoy	[ɓ̥oχoj]	'pot'
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 audibly 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.

See also

• Place of articulation
• Index of phonetics articles