articulationbilabial

Bilabial articulation refers to the production of speech sounds using both lips. In this place of articulation, the upper and lower lips come together or approach closely enough to shape the airstream. Bilabial sounds are common across languages and can be stops, nasals, fricatives, or approximants.

The most familiar bilabial consonants are the stops p and b, and the nasal m. The voiceless stop p is typically produced with a puff of air (aspiration) in many languages, while the voiced stop b has vocal fold vibration without the same aspiration. Other bilabial consonants appear in some languages, including bilabial fricatives such as ɸ (voiceless) and β (voiced), though these are relatively rare. The approximant w is sometimes described as a labiovelar sound, combining lip movement with activity at the velum rather than a purely bilabial constriction.

Bilabials contrast with sounds produced at other places of articulation, such as labiodentals (lower lip against upper teeth) or alveolars (tongue against the alveolar ridge). The bilabial set is among the most widespread in the world’s languages, contributing to basic phoneme inventories in many language families. In phonetic transcription, bilabial sounds are typically indicated by symbols such as p, b, and m in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), with other bilabial or near-bilabial sounds noted according to language-specific inventories.