labiodental

In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth. The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

IPA	Description	Example
		Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
p̪	voiceless labiodental plosive
b̪	voiced labiodental plosive
p̪͡f	voiceless labiodental affricate	Tsonga3	N/A	[tim̪p̪͡fuβu]	hippos
b̪͡v	voiced labiodental affricate	Tsonga4	N/A	[ʃileb̪͡vu]	chin
	labiodental nasal	English	symphony1	[ˈsɪɱfəni]	symphony
	voiceless labiodental fricative	English	fan	[fæn]	fan
	voiced labiodental fricative	English	van	[væn]	van
	labiodental approximant	Dutch	wang	[ʋɑŋ]	cheek
ɧ	voiceless rounded velarized labiodental fricative	Swedish5	sjok	[ɧuːk]	chunk

Notes:

1. In English, [ɱ] is an allophone of /m/ that occurs before /v/ and /f/.
2. The stops (the plosives and the nasal ɱ) are not confirmed to exist as separate phonemes in any language. They are sometimes written as ȹ ȸ (qp and db monograms). They may also be found in children's speech or as speech impediments^{[citation needed]}.
3. This applies only to the XiNkuna dialect of Tsonga where it is a separate phoneme (with aspirated and unaspirate allophones in free variation. Please note these differ from the German bilabial-labiodental affricate which commences with a bilabial p.
4. Again, found only in the XiNkuna dialect.
5. Varies considerably between dialects. In some dialects a different sound is employed, similar to the velar fricative [x].

See also

• Place of articulation
• List of phonetics topics
• Dentolabial consonant