Tenuis bilabial click
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| (Tenuis) bilabial click | |
|---|---|
| ʘ | |
| IPA number | 176 |
| Encoding | |
| Entity (decimal) | ʘ |
| Unicode (hex) | U+0298 |
| Kirshenbaum | p! |
| Braille |   |
| Listen | |
The voiceless or more precisely tenuis bilabial click is a click consonant found in some languages of southern Africa. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the sound is ⟨ʘ⟩.
Features[edit]
Features of the tenuis bilabial click:
- The airstream mechanism is lingual ingressive (also known as velaric ingressive), which means a pocket of air trapped between two closures is rarefied by a "sucking" action of the tongue, rather than being moved by the glottis or the lungs/diaphragm. The release of the forward closure produces the "click" sound. Voiced and nasal clicks have a simultaneous pulmonic egressive airstream.
- Its place of articulation is bilabial, which means it is articulated with both lips.
- Its phonation is voiceless, unaspirated, and unglottalized, which means it is produced without vibration or constriction of the vocal cords, and any following vowel starts without significant delay.
- 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.
Occurrence[edit]
Tenuis bilabial clicks only occur in the Tuu and Kx'a families of southern Africa.
| Language | Word | IPA | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| ǂHoan | [ʘoa] | 'two' | |
| Taa | [ʘàa] | 'child' | |
