The voiceless bilabial trill 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 wi ...

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 . The

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\_0 This sound is typologically extremely rare. It occurs in languages such as Pará Arára and

Sercquiais , also known as , Sarkese or Sark-French, is the Norman dialect of the Channel Island of Sark (Bailiwick of Guernsey). Sercquiais is a descendant of the 16th century Jèrriais used by the original colonists, 40 families mostly from Saint Ouen, ...

. Only a few languages contrast voiced and voiceless bilabial trills phonemically – e.g. Mangbetu of Congo and Ninde of Vanuatu.LINGUIST List 8.45: Bilabial trill
Linguistlist.org. Retrieved on 2010-12-08. There is also a very rare voiceless alveolar bilabially

trilled affricate Trilled affricates, also known as post-trilled consonants, are consonants which begin as a stop and have a trill release. These consonants are reported to exist in some Northern Paman languages in Australia, as well as in some Chapacuran langu ...

, (written in Everett & Kern) reported from Pirahã and from a few words in the Chapacuran languages Wariʼ and

Oro Win Oro Win is a moribund Chapacuran language spoken along the upper stretches of the Pacaás Novos River in Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South Ame ...

. The sound also appears as an

allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...

of the labialized

voiceless alveolar stop The voiceless alveolar, dental and postalveolar plosives (or stops) are types of consonantal sounds used in almost all spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postalv ...

of Abkhaz and Ubykh, but in those languages it is more often realised by a doubly articulated stop . In the Chapacuran languages, is reported almost exclusively before rounded vowels such as and .

Features

Features of the bilabial trill:

Occurrence

Notes

{{IPA navigation Trill consonants Pulmonic consonants Voiceless oral consonants Bilabial consonants