*** Welcome to piglix ***

Bilabial consonant


In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips.

The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are:

Owere Igbo has a six-way contrast among bilabial stops: [p pʰ ɓ̥ b b̤ ɓ]. Approximately 0.7% of the world's languages lack bilabial consonants altogether, including Tlingit, Chipewyan, Oneida, and Wichita.

The extensions to the IPA also define a bilabial percussive ([ʬ]) for striking the lips together (smacking the lips). A lip-smack in the non-percussive sense of the lips noisily 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 no language makes a distinction for centrality so the allophony is not noticeable.



...
Wikipedia

...