Bidental fricatives

The voiceless bidental fricative is a rare consonantal sound found in one natural language, in the Shapsug dialect of Adyghe, where it appears as a variant of /x/.^[1][2] People with hypoglossia (abnormally small tongue) may use it for target /s/.^{[citation needed]} It can be represented in the extIPA as ⟨h̪͆⟩.^[3]

Voiceless bidental fricative
h̪͆
Audio sample
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Voiced bidental fricative
ɦ̪͆
IPA number	146 + 653
Audio sample
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The voiced bidental fricative is unlikely to occur in any languages, but it can be represented as ⟨ɦ̪͆⟩.

Features

Features of the voiceless bidental 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 bidental, which means it is articulated with the lower and upper teeth pressed together.
• Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.
• 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.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Adyghe	Black Sea (Shapsug) dialect[1][2]	дахэ	[daːh̪͆a]	'pretty'	Corresponds to [x] in other dialects.

See also

• List of phonetics topics