bilabial

In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are:

IPA	Description	Example
		Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
	bilabial nasal	English	man	[mæn]	man
	voiceless bilabial plosive	English	spin	[spɪn]	spin
	voiced bilabial plosive	English	bed	[bɛd]	bed
	voiceless bilabial fricative	Japanese	富士山 (fujisan)	[ɸuʥisaɴ]	Mount Fuji
	voiced bilabial fricative	Ewe	ɛʋɛ	[ɛ̀βɛ̀]	Ewe
	bilabial approximant	Spanish	lobo	[loβ̞o]	wolf
	bilabial trill
	bilabial click

Owere Igbo has a six-way contrast among bilabial plosives: [p pʰ ɓ̥ b b̤ ɓ]. Approximately 0.7% of the world's languages lack bilabial consonants at all; these include Tlingit, Chipewyan, Oneida, and Wichita ^[1].

See also

• Place of articulation
• List of phonetics topics

References

1. ^ Maddieson, Ian. 2008. Absence of Common Consonants. In: Haspelmath, Martin & Dryer, Matthew S. & Gil, David & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library, chapter 18. Available online at http://wals.info/feature/18. Accessed on 2008-09-15.

• Ladefoged, Peter; Ian Maddieson (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.