Labiodental consonant

Places of
articulation

Labial
Bilabial
Labial–velar
Labial–coronal
Labiodental
Dentolabial

Bidental

Coronal
Linguolabial
Interdental
Dental
Denti-alveolar
Alveolar
Postalveolar
Palato-alveolar
Alveolo-palatal
Retroflex

Dorsal
Palatal
Labial–palatal
Velar
Uvular
Uvular–epiglottal

Radical
Pharyngeal
Epiglotto-pharyngeal
Epiglottal

Glottal
Tongue shape

Apical
Laminal
Subapical

Lateral
Sulcal

Palatal
Pharyngeal

See also: Manner of articulation
This page contains phonetic information in IPA, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help]

In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.

Contents

Labiodental consonant in IPA

The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

IPA Description Example
Language Orthography IPA Meaning
voiceless labiodental plosive
voiced labiodental plosive
p̪͡f voiceless labiodental affricate Tsonga N/A [tiɱp̪͡fuβu] 'hippos'
b̪͡v voiced labiodental affricate Tsonga N/A [ʃileb̪͡vu] 'chin'
ɱ labiodental nasal English symphony [ˈsɪɱfəni] 'symphony'
f voiceless labiodental fricative English fan [fæn] 'fan'
v voiced labiodental fricative English van [væn] 'van'
ʋ labiodental approximant Dutch wang [ʋɑŋ] 'cheek'
labiodental flap Mono vwa [a] 'send'

The IPA symbol ɧ refers to a sound occurring in Swedish, officially described as similar to the velar fricative [x], but one dialectal variant is a rounded, velarized labiodental, less ambiguously rendered as [fˠʷ].

Occurrence

The only common labiodental sounds to occur phonemically are the fricatives and the approximant. The labiodental flap occurs phonemically in over a dozen languages, but it is restricted geographically to central and southeastern Africa (Olson & Hajek 2003). With most other manners of articulation, the norm are bilabial consonants (which together with labiodentals, form the class of labial consonants).

[ɱ] is quite common, but in all or nearly all languages in which it occurs, it occurs only as an allophone of /m/ before labiodental consonants such as /v/ and /f/. It has been reported to occur phonemically in a dialect of Teke, but similar claims in the past have proven spurious.

The XiNkuna dialect of Tsonga features a pair of affricates as phonemes. In some other languages, such as Xhosa, affricates may occur as allophones of the fricatives. These differ from the German bilabial-labiodental affricate <pf>, which commences with a bilabial p. All these affricates are rare sounds.

The plosives are not confirmed to exist as separate phonemes in any language. They are sometimes written as ȹ ȸ (qp and db ligatures). They may also be found in children's speech or as speech impediments.

See also

References