From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Labial-velar consonants are doubly articulated at the velum and the lips. They are sometimes called "labiovelar consonants", a term which can also refer to labialized velars, such as the approximant [w].

Truly doubly articulated labial-velars occur as plosives and nasal stops in the majority of languages in West and Central Africa, and are relatively common in the eastern end of New Guinea. They include [k͡p, g͡b, ŋ͡m]. The Yélî Dnye language of Rossel Island, Papua New Guinea, has both labial-velars and labial-alveolar consonants. Labial velar unvoiced plosives and nasals also occur in Vietnamese, albeit only at the end of words.

To pronounce these, try saying [k, g, ŋ], but close your lips as you would for [p, b, m]. Then release just as you would do to produce these sounds. Note that while 90% of the occlusion overlaps, the onset of the velar occurs slightly before that of the labial, and the release of the labial occurs slightly after that of the velar, so that the preceding vowel sounds like it's followed by a velar, while the following vowel sounds like it's following a labial. Thus the order of the symbols in k͡p and g͡b is motivated by the phonetic details of these sounds.

These sounds are clearly single consonants rather than consonant clusters. The Eggon language, for example, contrasts these possibilities, with /bg/ and /gb/ both distinct from /g͡b/. Ignoring tone, we have:

For transcribing these sounds, occasionally ligatures will be seen instead of digraphs with a tie bar:

Note that although such symbols are readily understood, they are not sanctioned by the IPA, and have no Unicode values. They can, however, be specified as the way an OpenType font displays gb and kp digraphs.

Labial-velar plosives also occur as ejective [k͡p’] and implosive [ɠɓ] (the tie bar has been removed for legibility). There may be labial-velar approximants in languages like Japanese; see labiovelar consonant. The only other labial-velar consonants are the velar bilabial clicks.

• Place of articulation
• List of phonetics topics