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Voiced bilabial fricative

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IPA number
  
127

Unicode (hex)
  
U+03B2

Kirshenbaum
  
B

Entity (decimal)
  
β

X-SAMPA
  
B

Braille
  
Example

Voiced bilabial fricative

The voiced bilabial fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨β⟩ (or more properly ⟨ꞵ⟩), and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ⟨B⟩. The symbol ⟨β⟩ is the Greek letter beta. This symbol is also sometimes used to represent the bilabial approximant, though that is more clearly written with the lowering diacritic, that is ⟨β̞⟩. Theoretically, it could also be transcribed as an advanced labiodental approximant ⟨ʋ̟⟩, but this symbol is hardly ever, if at all, used so. Very few languages are known to make a phonemic contrast between the voiced bilabial fricative and the bilabial approximant, but the Uto-Aztecan Tarahumara does. The bilabial fricative is diachronically unstable and is likely to shift to [v].

Contents

In English, this sound is not used: it can be made by approximating the normal "v" sound, [v], between the lips.

Features

Features of the voiced bilabial fricative:

  • Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
  • Its place of articulation is bilabial, which means it is articulated with both lips.
  • Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
  • It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
  • Because the sound is not produced with airflow over the tongue, the central–lateral dichotomy does not apply.
  • The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

    • Occurrence

    In the following transcriptions, the undertack diacritic is used to indicate an approximant [β̞].

    References

    Voiced bilabial fricative Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA