The voiced bilabial plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is b, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is b. The voiced bilabial plosive occurs in English, and it is the sound denoted by the letter "b" in boy.

Features

Features of the voiced bilabial plosive:

• Its manner of articulation is plosive or stop, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract.
• Its place of articulation is bilabial which means it is articulated with both lips.
• Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

In English

[b] is one of the few phonemes in English that has a one-to-one correspondence with a letter. It is always denoted by "b", and excluding a handful of words that are spelled with a silent "b" (e.g. doubt and lamb), it is always pronounced [b].

In other languages

In many languages, such as German or Russian, a final letter b is pronounced soundless, as [p] or [b̥].

Greek

In Ancient Greek, the letter β was pronounced [b], but it is now pronounced [v]. Modern Greek [b] (mostly in loan words) is spelled μπ (mp).

Spanish

Spanish has [b]. It is denoted by "b", as in bombero (firefighter). In many dialects, it may also be denoted by a word-initial "v", as in veinte (twenty). Standard European Spanish uses the sound [β]

See also

• Betacism
• List of phonetics topics