Voiceless bilabial fricative

This article is about the consonantal sound. For the Greek letter, see Phi (letter). For the Cyrillic letter, see Ef (Cyrillic).

Voiceless bilabial fricative
ɸ
IPA number	126
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ɸ
Unicode (hex)	U+0278
X-SAMPA	p\
Kirshenbaum	P
Braille
Image
Sound
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The voiceless bilabial fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɸ⟩. For English-speakers, it is easiest to think of the sound as an f-sound made only with the lips, instead of the upper teeth and lower lip, or a blowing sound.

Features

Features of the voiceless bilabial fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
• Its place of articulation is bilabial, which means it is articulated with both lips.
• Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.
• 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.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Ainu		フチ	[ɸu̜tʃi]	'grandmother'
Angor		fi	[ɸi]	'body'
Bengali	Eastern dialects	ফল/fol	[ɸɔl]	'fruit'	Allophone of /f/ in Bangladesh and Tripura, /pʰ/ used in Western dialects.
Ewe		éƒá	[é ɸá]	'he polished'	Contrasts with /f/
Italian	Tuscan	i capitani	[iˌhäɸiˈθäːni]	'the captains'	Intervocalic allophone of /p/. See Italian phonology
Itelmen		чуфчуф	[tʃuɸtʃuɸ]	'rain'
Japanese		腐敗/fuhai	[ɸɯhai]	'decay'	Allophone of /h/ before /ɯ/. See Japanese phonology
Kaingang		fy	[ɸɨ]	'seed'
Kwama		[kòːɸɛ́]		'basket'
Mao		[ʔɑ̄ˈɸɑ́ŋ]		'empty'
Māori		whakapapa	[ɸakapapa]	'genealogy'
Odoodee		pagai	[ɸɑɡɑi]	'coconut'
Spanish	Many dialects	fuera	[ˈɸwe̞ɾa̠]	'outside'	Non-standard variant of /f/. See Spanish phonology
	Standard European	pub	[ˈpa̠ɸ̞]	'pub'	An approximant; allophone of /b/ before a pause. See Spanish phonology
	North-Central Peninsular	absoluto	[a̠ɸs̠o̟ˈlut̪o̟]	'absolute'	Allophone of /b/ in the coda. In this dialect, the unvoiced coda obstruents - /p, t, k/ - are realized as fricatives only if they precede a voiced consonant; otherwise, they emerge as stops.
		pop latino	[ˈpo̞ɸ lä̝ˈt̪ino̟]	'Latin pop'
	Southern Peninsular	los vuestros	[lɔʰ ˈɸːwɛʰtːɾɔʰ]	'yours'	It varies with [βː] in some accents. Allophone of /b/ after /s/.
Tahitian		'ōfī	[ʔoːɸiː]	'snake'	Allophone of /f/
Turkmen		fabrik	[ɸabrik]	'factory'

See also

• Index of phonetics articles