Voiced bilabial trill facts for kids
The voiced bilabial trill is a special sound used in some spoken languages. Imagine making a "brrr" sound with your lips, like when you're cold, but with your voice turned on! That's close to a voiced bilabial trill.
The symbol for this sound in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is ⟨ʙ⟩. It looks like a small capital letter "b".
Quick facts for kids Bilabial trill |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| ʙ | |||
|
|||
| IPA number | 121 | ||
| Encoding | |||
| Entity (decimal) | ʙ |
||
| Unicode (hex) | U+0299 | ||
| X-SAMPA | B\ |
||
| Kirshenbaum | b<trl> |
||
|
|
|||
Contents
What Makes This Sound Special?
This sound has several unique features:
How It's Made
- Trill: This means your lips vibrate very quickly against each other. It's like a mini-motor sound made with your mouth!
- Bilabial: "Bi" means two, and "labial" means lips. So, you use both of your lips to make this sound.
- Voiced: When you make this sound, your vocal cords vibrate. You can feel this if you put your hand on your throat while saying it.
- Oral: The air comes out of your mouth, not your nose.
- Central: The air flows out over the center of your tongue.
- Pulmonic: The air that makes the sound comes from your lungs, like most speech sounds.
Different Types of Bilabial Trills
There are a couple of ways this sound can appear:
| IPA Symbol | What it is |
|---|---|
| ʙ | Voiced bilabial trill (the basic sound) |
| ᵐʙ | Prenasalized voiced bilabial trill (starts with a little "m" sound before the trill) |
Where You Can Hear It
This sound is not found in English, but it's used in some languages around the world.
- In the Medumba language (spoken in Cameroon, Africa), you might hear it in words like mʙʉ́, which means 'dog'.
- The Pirahã language (spoken in Brazil) uses this sound. For example, kaoáíʙogì means 'evil spirit'.
- In the Komi-Permyak language (spoken in Russia), it appears in the word ʙuŋɡaɡ, meaning 'dung beetle'. However, it's often used more like a special effect in speech rather than a regular word sound.
Sounds That Start with a Nasal Sound
Sometimes, the bilabial trill starts with a nasal sound (like 'm'). This is called a prenasalized trill.
- In the Kele language (New Guinea), you can hear it in ᵐʙulim, meaning 'face'.
- The Unua language (Vanuatu) uses it in ᵐʙue, which means 'pig'.
Sounds That Start with Another Consonant
In some languages, the bilabial trill can be part of a more complex sound, where it follows another consonant like 't' or 'd'.
- The Sangtam language (spoken in India) has a sound like t͡ʙàŋ, which means 'needle'.
- In the Namuyi language (spoken in China), you might hear t͡ʙ̩˨, meaning 'to slaughter'.
How It Develops in Languages
Often, the voiced bilabial trill appears in languages as part of a sound that starts with a nasal sound and is followed by a vowel like "u". Over time, these sounds can change and become more common in different parts of words.
See also
In Spanish: Vibrante múltiple bilabial sonora para niños
- Index of phonetics articles
