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 .
Varieties
Some bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are:
{|class=wikitable
|-
! rowspan="2" | IPA
! rowspan="2" | Description
! colspan="4" | Example
|-
! Language
! Orthography
! IPA
! Meaning
|-
!
| voiceless bilabial nasal
| Hmong
|
|
| Hmong
|-
!
| voiced bilabial nasal
| English
| man
|
| man
|-
!
| voiceless bilabial plosive
| English
| spin
|
| spin
|-
!
| voiced bilabial plosive
| English
| bed
|
| bed
|-
!
| voiceless bilabial affricate
|Kaingang
|
|
| 'seed'
|-
!
| voiced bilabial affricate
| Shipibo
|
|
| 'small intestine'
|-
!
| voiceless bilabial fricative
| Japanese
| ()
|
| Mount Fuji
|-
!
| voiced bilabial fricative
| Ewe
|
|
| Ewe
|-
!
| bilabial approximant
| Spanish
|
|
| wolf
|-
!
| voiced bilabial flap
| Mono
|
|
| 'send'
|-
!
| voiceless bilabial trill
| Pará Arára
|colspan=2 |
| 'to throw away'
|-
!
| voiced bilabial trill
| Nias
|
|
| lower jaw
|-
!
| bilabial ejective stop
| Adyghe
|
|
| meat
|-
!
| bilabial ejective fricative
| Yuchi
|
|
|
|-
!
| voiceless bilabial implosive
| Kaqchikel
|
|
|'pot'
|-
!
| voiced bilabial implosive
| Jamaican Patois
|
|
| beat
|-
!
| bilabial clicks (many distinct consonants)
| Nǁng
|
|
| meat
|}
Owere Igbo has a six-way contrast among bilabial stops: .
The IPA chart shades out bilabial lateral consonants. This is because lateral consonants are defined as ones in which the airflow passes over the side of the tongue; the category therefore does not apply to labial consonants. (See also labiodental consonant, which very commonly have airflow at the side of the mouth.)
Other varieties
The extensions to the IPA also define a () for smacking the lips together. A lip-smack in the non-percussive sense of the lips audibly parting would be an ingressive .
See also
- Place of articulation
- Index of phonetics articles