The voiced bilabial fricative is a type of

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...

al sound, used in some spoken

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

s. The symbol in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...

that represents this sound is , and the equivalent

X-SAMPA The Extended Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (X-SAMPA) is a variant of SAMPA developed in 1995 by John C. Wells, professor of phonetics at University College London. It is designed to unify the individual language SAMPA alphabets, a ...

symbol is B. The official symbol is the

Greek letter The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as ...

beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; grc, βῆτα, bē̂ta or ell, βήτα, víta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labiod ...

. This letter is also often used to represent the bilabial

approximant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce ...

, though that is more precisely written with a lowering diacritic, that is . That sound may also be transcribed as an advanced labiodental approximant , in which case the diacritic is again frequently omitted, since no contrast is likely. It has been proposed that either a turned ⟨⟩ or reversed ⟨⟩ be used as a dedicated symbol for the bilabial approximant, but despite occasional usage this has not gained general acceptance. It is extremely rare for a language to make a phonemic contrast between the voiced bilabial fricative and the bilabial approximant. The

Mapos Buang language Mapos Buang, also known as Mapos or Central Buang, is an Oceanic language in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua N ...

of New Guinea contains this contrast. Its bilabial approximant is analyzed as filling a phonological gap in the labiovelar series of the consonant system rather than the bilabial series.

Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic br ...

and

Proto-Italic The Proto-Italic language is the ancestor of the Italic languages, most notably Latin and its descendants, the Romance languages. It is not directly attested in writing, but has been reconstructed to some degree through the comparative method. P ...

are also reconstructed as having had this contrast, albeit with being an allophone for another consonant in both cases. In

Bashkir language Bashkir (, ; Bashkir: ''Bashqortsa'', ''Bashqort tele'', ) is a Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak branch. It is co-official with Russian in Bashkortostan. It is spoken by approximately 1.4 million native speakers in Russia, as well as ...

, it is an intervocal allophone of , and it is contrastive with : балабыҙ /bɑɫɑˈβɯð/ - "our child", балауыҙ /bɑɫɑˈwɯð/ - "wax". The bilabial fricative is diachronically unstable (likely to be considerably varied between dialects of a language that makes use of it) and is likely to shift to ., citing The sound is not the primary realization of any sound in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

dialects except for

Chicano English Chicano English, or Mexican-American English, is a dialect of American English spoken primarily by Mexican Americans (sometimes known as Chicanos), particularly in the Southwestern United States ranging from Texas to California,Newman, Micha ...

, but it can be produced by approximating the normal English between the lips; it can also sometimes occur as an allophone of after bilabial consonants.

Features

Features of the voiced bilabial fricative:

Occurrence

Voiced bilabial fricative

Bilabial approximant

Notes

References

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Voiced Bilabial Fricative Fricative consonants Bilabial consonants Approximant consonants Pulmonic consonants Voiced oral consonants