Voiceless bilabial fricative

Voiceless bilabial fricative
ɸ
IPA number	126
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ɸ
Unicode (hex)	U+0278
X-SAMPA	p\
Kirshenbaum	P
Braille
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Sound
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The voiceless 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 ⟨ɸ⟩. For English-speakers, it is easiest to think of the sound as an f-sound made only with the lips, instead of the upper teeth and lower lip, or a blowing sound.

Features

Features of the voiceless 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 is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.

• 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 central–lateral dichotomy does not apply.

• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Ainu		フチ	[ɸu̜tʃi]	'grandmother'
Angor		fi	[ɸi]	'body'
Bengali	Eastern dialects	ফল/fol	[ɸɔl]	'fruit'	Allophone of /f/ in Bangladesh and Tripura, /pʰ/ used in Western dialects.
Ewe[1]		éƒá	[é ɸá]	'he polished'	Contrasts with /f/
Italian	Tuscan[2]	i capitani	[iˌhäɸiˈθäːni]	'the captains'	Intervocalic allophone of /p/.[2] See Italian phonology
Itelmen		чуфчуф	[tʃuɸtʃuɸ]	'rain'
Japanese[3]		腐敗/fuhai	[ɸɯhai]	'decay'	Allophone of /h/ before /ɯ/. See Japanese phonology
Kaingang		fy	[ɸɨ]	'seed'
Kwama		[kòːɸɛ́]		'basket'
Mao		[ʔɑ̄ˈɸɑ́ŋ]		'empty'
Māori		whakapapa	[ɸakapapa]	'genealogy'
Odoodee		pagai	[ɸɑɡɑi]	'coconut'
Spanish	Some dialects [4][5]	fuera	[ˈɸwe̞ɾa̠]	'outside'	Non-standard variant of /f/. See Spanish phonology
	Standard European[6]	pub	[ˈpa̠ɸ̞]	'pub'	An approximant; allophone of /b/ before a pause.[6]
	North-Central Peninsular[7]	abdicar	[a̠ɸðiˈka̠ɾ]	'abdicate'	Allophone of /b/ in the coda. In this dialect, the unvoiced coda obstruents - /p, t, k/ - are realized as fricatives only if they precede a voiced consonant; otherwise, they emerge as stops.
	Southern Peninsular[8]	los vuestros	[lɔʰ ˈɸːwɛʰtːɾɔʰ]	'yours'	It varies with [βː] in some accents. Allophone of /b/ after /s/.
Tahitian		'ōfī	[ʔoːɸiː]	'snake'	Allophone of /f/
Turkish	Some speakers[9]	ufuk	[uˈɸuk]	'horizon'	Allophone of /f/ before rounded vowels and, to a lesser extent, word-finally after rounded vowels.[9] See Turkish phonology
Turkmen		fabrik	[ɸabrik]	'factory'

See also

• Index of phonetics articles

References

1. Ladefoged (2005:156)
2. Hall (1944:75)
3. Okada (1991:95)
4. Boyd-Bowman (1953:229)
5. Cotton & Sharp (1988:15)
6. Wetzels & Mascaró (2001), p. 224.
8. Pérez, Aguilar & Jiménez (1998:225–228)
9. Göksel & Kerslake (2005:6)

Bibliography

• Göksel, Asli; Kerslake, Celia (2005), Turkish: a comprehensive grammar (PDF), Routledge, ISBN 978-0415114943, archived from the original (PDF) on 26 November 2014
• Hall, Robert A. Jr. (1944). "Italian phonemes and orthography". Italica. American Association of Teachers of Italian. 21 (2): 72–82. doi:10.2307/475860. JSTOR 475860.
• Ladefoged, Peter (2005), Vowels and Consonants (Second ed.), Blackwell
• Okada, Hideo (1991), "Japanese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 21 (2): 94–97, doi:10.1017/S002510030000445X
• Pérez, Ramón Morillo-Velarde; Aguilar, Rafael Cano; Jiménez, Antonio Narbona (1998), El Español hablado en Andalucía, ISBN 84-344-8225-8
• Wetzels, W. Leo; Mascaró, Joan (2001), "The Typology of Voicing and Devoicing" (PDF), Language, 77 (2): 207–244, doi:10.1353/lan.2001.0123