Voiced 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 Number121
Audio sample
Encoding
Entity (decimal)ʙ
Unicode (hex)U+0299
X-SAMPAB\
Braille⠔ (braille pattern dots-35)⠃ (braille pattern dots-12)

Features

Features of the voiced bilabial trill:

Varieties

IPADescription
ʙVoiced bilabial trill
ᵐʙPrenasalized voiced bilabial trill

Occurrences

Occurrences of [ʙ] in various languages
AffiliationLanguageWordIPAMeaningNotes
BantoidMedumbamʙʉ[mʙʉ́][citation needed]'dog'
NgweLebang dialect[àʙɨ́ ́]'ash'
MuraPirahãkaoáíbogi[kàò̯áí̯ʙòˈɡì]'evil spirit'Allophone of /b/ before /o/
ʔíbogi'milk'
UralicKomi-Permyak[1]Бунгаг[ʙuŋɡaɡ]'dung beetle'Generally paralinguistic. This is the only true word it is found in.
Senu RiverKwomtari[2][example needed]
SkouSko[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. [ˈʙaːtkaɐ̯tɔfəln] for Bratkartoffeln).

Prenasalized

Occurrences of [ᵐʙ] in various languages
AffiliationLanguageWordIPAMeaningNotes
OceanicKele[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/.
BorderKilmeri[2][example needed]

Prestopped trills and stops with trill release

Occurrences of bilabial trills with a stop in various languages
AffiliationLanguageWordIPAMeaningNotes
NagaSangtam[t͡ʙàŋ][7]'needle'Phonemic as /t͡ʙ/, contrasts with /t͡ʙ̥ʰ/.[7]
QiangicLizu[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

Notes

References

External links