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

Transcription

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

IPA	Description	Example
		Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
	bilabial nasal	English	man	[mæn]
	voiceless bilabial stop	English	spin	[sp?n]
	voiced bilabial stop	English	bed	[b?d]
	voiceless bilabial fricative	Japanese	(fujisan)	[?u?isa?]	Mount Fuji
	voiced bilabial fricative	Ewe	???	[?]	Ewe
	bilabial approximant	Spanish	lobo	[loo]	wolf
	bilabial trill	Nias	simbi	[si?i]	lower jaw
	bilabial ejective	Adyghe	?	[p'a]	meat
?	bilabial click release (many distinct consonants)	N?ng	?oe	[?oe]	meat

Owere Igbo has a six-way contrast among bilabial stops: [p p? b b? ?]. Approximately 0.7% of the world's languages lack bilabial consonants altogether, including Tlingit, Chipewyan, Oneida, and Wichita.^[1]

The extensions to the IPA also define a bilabial percussive ([?]) for striking the lips together (smacking the lips - see percussive consonant). A lip-smack in the non-percussive sense of the lips noisily parting would be [].^[2]

The IPA chart shades out bilabial lateral consonants, which is sometimes read as indicating that such sounds are not possible. The fricatives [?] and [?] are often lateral, but no language makes a distinction for centrality so the allophony is not noticeable.

See also

• Place of articulation
• Index of phonetics articles

References

Citations

Sources

General references

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