Bilabial consonant

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

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 /w/.

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].

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

• Place of articulation
• Index of phonetics articles

General references