Voiceless bilabial implosive


A voiceless bilabial implosive is a rare consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is or. A dedicated IPA letter,, was withdrawn in 1993.

Features

Features of the voiceless bilabial implosive:

Occurrence

A rare and evidently unstable sound, is found in the Serer of Senegal, the Owere dialect of Igbo in Nigeria, and in some dialects of the Poqomchi’ and Quiche languages of Guatemala. Owere Igbo has a seven-way contrast among bilabial stops,, where is allophone of and is allophone of.