Bilabial nasal facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Bilabial nasal |
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| m | |||
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| IPA number | 114 | ||
| Encoding | |||
| Entity (decimal) | m |
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| Unicode (hex) | U+006D | ||
| X-SAMPA | m |
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| Kirshenbaum | m |
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The bilabial nasal is a type of consonant sound. It is used in almost all spoken languages around the world. You make this sound by closing both your lips and letting air come out through your nose. Think of the "m" sound in words like map or rum in English.
What is a Bilabial Nasal?
This sound is called "bilabial" because you use both of your lips (bi- means two, and labial means lips). It's called "nasal" because the air comes out through your nose, not your mouth.
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) has a special letter for this sound: ⟨⟩. The X-SAMPA system, which is used for computers, writes this sound as ⟨m⟩.
Nearly every language uses this sound. However, a few languages, like Mohawk, don't use it very often.
Where Can We Find This Sound?
The bilabial nasal sound is very common. Here are some examples of words from different languages that use this sound:
| Language | Word | IPA | Meaning | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arabic | Standard | مطابخ | align="center" | align="center"|'kitchens' |
| Catalan | [[[Catalan orthography|mare]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | align="center" | align="center"| 'mother' | |
| Chinese | Cantonese | 晚/[[[Chinese character|maan5]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | align="center" | align="center"| 'night' |
| Mandarin | 母親/[[[Chinese character|mǔqīn]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | align="center" | align="center"| 'mother' | |
| Dutch | [[[Dutch orthography|mond]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | align="center" | align="center"| 'mouth' | |
| English | [[[English orthography|him]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | align="center" | align="center"| 'him' | |
| Finnish | [[[Finnish orthography|minä]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | align="center" | align="center"| 'I' | |
| French | [[[French orthography|manger]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | align="center" | align="center"| 'to eat' | |
| Georgian | სამი | align="center" | align="center"|'three' | |
| Greek | [[[Greek alphabet|μάζα]]/maza] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | align="center" | align="center"| 'clump' | |
| Hawaiian | [[[Hawaiian alphabet|maka]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | 'eye' | ||
| Indonesian | [[[Latin alphabet|masuk]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | 'enter' | ||
| Italian | [[[Italian alphabet|mamma]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | align="center" | align="center"| 'mamma' | |
| Japanese | 乾杯/[[[Romanization of Japanese|kampai]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | align="center" | align="center"| 'a toast' | |
| Malay | [[[Malay alphabet|malam]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | 'night' | ||
| Malayalam | കമ്മി | 'shortage' | ||
| Polish | [[[Polish orthography|masa]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | 'mass' | ||
| Portuguese | [[[Portuguese orthography|mato]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | align="center" | align="center"| 'bush' | |
| Russian | муж | align="center" | align="center"| 'husband' | |
| Spanish | [[[Spanish orthography|grumete]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | align="center" | align="center"| 'cabin boy' | |
| Vietnamese | [[[Vietnamese alphabet|muối]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | align="center" | align="center"| 'salt' | |
| Zapotec | Tilquiapan | man | align="center" | align="center"| 'animal' |
See also
In Spanish: Nasal bilabial para niños
