Voiced bilabial trill

"Bilabial trill" redirects here. For the voiceless consonant, see Voiceless bilabial trill.

The voiced bilabial trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the sound is ⟨ʙ⟩, a small capital version of the Latin letter b, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is B\.

Voiced bilabial trill
ʙ
IPA number	121
Audio sample
source · help
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ʙ
Unicode (hex)	U+0299
X-SAMPA	B\
Braille
Image

Features

Features of the voiced bilabial trill:

• Its manner of articulation is trill, which means it is produced by directing air over an articulator so that it vibrates. In most instances, it is only found as the trilled release of a prenasalized stop.
• 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.
• Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.

Varieties

IPA	Description
ʙ	Voiced bilabial trill
ᵐʙ	Prenasalized voiced bilabial trill

Occurrences

Occurrences of [ʙ] in various languages

Affiliation	Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Bantoid	Medumba		mʙʉ	[mʙʉ́][citation needed]	'dog'
	Ngwe	Lebang dialect	[àʙɨ́ ́]		'ash'
Mura	Pirahã		kaoáíbogi	[kàò̯áí̯ʙòˈɡì]	'evil spirit'	Allophone of /b/ before /o/
			ʔíbogi	[ʔíʙoi]ⓘ	'milk'
Uralic	Komi-Permyak[1]		Бунгаг	[ʙuŋɡaɡ]	'dung beetle'	Generally paralinguistic. This is the only true word it is found in.
Senu River	Kwomtari[2]		[example needed]
Skou	Sko[2]		[example needed]

The Knorkator song "[Buchstabe]" (the actual title is a glyph) on the 1999 album Hasenchartbreaker uses a similar sound (though linguolabial instead of bilabial) to replace "br" in a number of German words (e.g. [ˈʙaːtkaʁtɔfl̩n] for Bratkartoffeln).

Prenasalized

Occurrences of [ᵐʙ] in various languages

Affiliation	Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Oceanic	Kele[3][4]		[ᵐʙulim]		'face'	And other languages of the Admiralty Islands
	Titan[3][4]		[ᵐʙutukei]		'wooden plate'
	Unua[5]		[ᵐʙue]		'pig'
	Ahamb[6]		[nãᵐʙwas]		'pig'	Phonemic; contrasts between /ᵐʙ/ and /ʙ̥/.
Border	Kilmeri[2]		[example needed]

Prestopped trills and stops with trill release

Occurrences of bilabial trills with a stop in various languages

Affiliation	Language	Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Naga	Sangtam	[t͡ʙàŋ][7]		'needle'	Phonemic as /t͡ʙ/, contrasts with /t͡ʙ̥ʰ/.[7]
Qiangic	Lizu[8][9]	TU,	[tʙ̩˥˩]	'bean'	Syllabic; allophone of /u/ after initial /pʰ, p, b, tʰ, t, d/.[8]
	Namuyi[10]	tbĭh	[t͡ʙ̩˨][10]	'to slaughter'	Phonemic according to Pavlík (2017) occurring before /u/ or as a syllabic consonant. [ʙ] is classified as an allophone of /u/ following a /p/, /b/, /t/ or /d/ in the phonemic analysis of Huáng (1992:673–674), and Yǐn (2016).[11] No bilabial trills are present in the phonemic analysis of Nishida (2013).
		dbù	[d͡ʙu˥˨][10]	'wild'
		pbĭh	[p͡ʙ̩][10]	'to deliver'
		[b͡ʙuda][10]		surname
	Pumi[9]	biiv	[pʙ̩˥]	'to dig'	Syllabic; allophone of /ə/ after /pʰ, p, b, tʰ, t, d/.

Phonology

In many of the languages in which the bilabial trill occurs, it occurs only as part of a prenasalized bilabial stop with trilled release, [mbʙ]. That developed historically from a prenasalized stop before a relatively high back vowel like [mbu]. In such instances, the sounds are usually still limited to the environment of a following [u]. However, the trills in Mangbetu may precede any vowel and are sometimes preceded by only a nasal.

See also

• Index of phonetics articles