Voiced bilabial fricative

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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, 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, β̞. In the English language, this sound is not used, but is made by making the normal "v" sound without fully closing the lips or without touching the top teeth to the lower lip.

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 type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

Occurrence

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

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Akei		[βati]		'four'
Alekano		hanuva	[hɑnɯβɑ]	'nothing'
Amharic		አበባ	[aβəβa]	'flower'
Angor		fufung	[ɸuβuŋ]	'horn'
Berta		[βɑ̀lɑ̀ːziʔ]		'no'
Dahalo		[koːβo]		'to want'
Ewe		Ewe	[ɛβɛ]	'Ewe'
Japanese		神戸市/kōbe-shi		'Kobe'	only in fast speech between vowels. See Japanese phonology
Kabyle		bri	[βri]	'to cut'
Occitan	Gascon	La-vetz	[laβets]	'then'
Portuguese	European	rabo		'tail'	Northern and central dialects. See Portuguese phonology
Spanish		lava	[ˈlaβ̞a]	'lava'	See Spanish phonology
Riverense Portuñol		brabo	[bɾaβo]	'angry'
Turkmen		watan	[βatan]	'country'

Voiced bilabial fricative

Features

Occurrence

References

Bibliography

See also