Bilabial consonant

Bilabial consonants are very common across languages. Only around 0.7% of the world's languages lack bilabial consonants altogether, including Tlingit, Chipewyan, Oneida, and Wichita,^[1] though all of these have a labial–velar approximant /w/.

Some bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are:

Owere Igbo has a six-way contrast among bilabial stops: [p pʰ ɓ̥ b b̤ ɓ].^{[citation needed]}

The IPA chart shades out bilabial lateral consonants. This is because lateral consonants are defined as ones in which the airflow passes over the side of the tongue; the category therefore does not apply to labial consonants. (See also labiodental consonant, which very commonly have airflow at the side of the mouth.)

The extensions to the IPA also define a bilabial percussive ([ʬ] ^ⓘ) for smacking the lips together. A lip-smack in the non-percussive sense of the lips audibly parting would be an ingressive [ʬ↓].^[7]

• Place of articulation
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