Voiceless bilabial implosive

A voiceless bilabial implosive is a rare consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɓ̥ or pʼ↓. A dedicated IPA letter, ƥ, was withdrawn in 1993.

Voiceless bilabial implosive
ɓ̥
ƥ
pʼ↓

Features

Features of the voiceless bilabial implosive:

  • 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 centrallateral dichotomy does not apply.
  • The airstream mechanism is implosive (glottalic ingressive), which means it is produced by pulling air in by pumping the glottis downward. As it is voiceless, the glottis is completely closed, and there is no pulmonic airstream at all.

Occurrence

A rare and evidently unstable sound, /ɓ̥/ is found in the Serer of Senegal, the Owere dialect of Igbo in Nigeria, and in some dialects of the Poqomchi’ and Quiche languages of Guatemala. Owere Igbo has a seven-way contrast among bilabial stops, /pʰ p ɓ̥ bʱ b ɓ m/, where [ɓ̥] is allophone of [k͡p] and [ɓ] is allophone of [ɡ͡b].

gollark: I hope Ligtown will be a demonstration of the wonderful concrete cube style.
gollark: I'm questioning its republicitude.
gollark: I'm not questioning its sovereignty.
gollark: No it's not.
gollark: No it's not.

See also

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