Talk:Voiceless bilabial plosive

I am trying something here by adding language examples to the articles on various phonemes. Not having much background in linguistics, the existing descriptions are not very informative to me. Please add other language examples if you can, as it may be helpful to other readers. [[User:CyborgTosser|CyborgTosser (Only half the battle)]] 11:32, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

disputed
see Talk:Aspiration (phonetics) lysdexia 12:45, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Separate aspirated/unaspirated examples
As the article says, in some languages such as Hindi /p/ and /pʰ/ are distinctive sounds that can change the meaning of a word. I added separate Hindi examples and  (taken from the IPA handbook) to illustrate this. was removed on the grounds that there should be only "one example per language". If this is the rule then it seems that we should have separate articles unaspirated voiceless bilabial plosive and aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive: otherwise how are we to illustrate this distinction? Also, is there a page anywhere where these "rules" are set out? Cheers. Grover cleveland 13:13, 30 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry if I didn't explain it enough. The format guidelines are here.  I'm currently the only person converting the pages to fit the guidelines right now (which is why there isn't a table here yet).  These pages generally correspond to IPA symbols.  Having pages for the aspirated forms would be much too cumbersome.  However, once I get around to converting this page to a table, we can certainly put in the notes column that Hindi contrasts plain and aspirated forms.  Were we to not do that, however, the distinction can be illustrated in the article's prose.  In fact, I recommend doing it by prose.  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 19:34, 30 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Would it be better if one creates a table of "occurrence of varieties"? It would be much clear to the users that way. Separate pages would be too many, but putting them inside prose might in turn make the prose longer than necessary. Keith Galveston (talk) 11:00, 20 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm against that. Going away from the "one example per language" rule will get things cluttered and/or confusing.  If you'd like to, though, you can propose it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Phonetics.  If it's decided that that's a good thing, then it wouldn't just be for this article but all consonant articles.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  19:31, 20 February 2008 (UTC)


 * What if the language uses more than one of the same type? This is why there probably should be separate pages for aspirated and unaspirated versions of this sound. If this is not in the works, then at least the prose of the article should make mention of the different forms so that it is not misleading. As it is, it uses an unaspirated form and gives the impression that it is the typical form and also the one used in English. MXVN (talk) 12:47, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Is sound example correct?
The sound example sounds like 'b' not 'p' to me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.155.192.95 (talk) 16:50, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's correct. English  often lacks voicing and contrasts with  by a puff of air after the latter.  I suspect you are a native English speaker, no?  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  19:19, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * No, this can't be correct. The sample may not be voiced, but it sure isn't aspirated either. These are the two things which should separate [b] from [p]. While still a voiceless bilabial plosive, it's not the English /p/ sound (which the article seems to state it is), and probably not the [p] due to the lack of aspiration. MXVN (talk) 12:37, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * for me too thsi ist indeed the wrong sound Tavin (talk) 23:36, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The sound file is correct: no voicing, no aspiration. Granted, the [p] is rather tense, but that's a minor detail. Note that both the English and the German /p/ are typically aspirated and thus different from what you (should be) hearing here. --JorisvS (talk) 16:59, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I am willing to except that it is a "p" sound. Since the sound clip (as shown on this talk page) clearly causes confusion, I propose text be over it stating it is the "plain 'p'" variety as apposed to the pʰ, pʲ, pʷ, p̚, p̌, or pʼ varieties. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.20.225.252 (talk) 00:52, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The guy literally says "Bah! Abah!" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:C2:2BDB:3F00:587D:3F6:1AAD:6266 (talk) 15:57, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

voiceless?
in truth both P and B are voiceless plosives however P is 'twice' as plosive. either or can be voiced or unvoiced.

an unvoiced B expressed with twice plosivity will sound as P. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.218.158.244 (talk) 14:20, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
 * In English, the distinction you're talking about is aspiration, represented in the IPA as and . — Æµ§œš¹  [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]  15:37, 20 May 2012 (UTC)


 * i appreciate there are 6 aspirations (perhaps more), from closed palate (like a fish face, where b is 'clicky' and p falls silent) to full diaphagm and intercostal, although making the plosivity of the p more accessible it does still require a significantly higher plosivity than a b, perhaps best understood as bilabial tension (which itself can also vary top&bottom tense/untense combinations), akin to the sharpness of a 'dirac delta function' ? possibly as a similtude. the higher tension permitting the higher plosive 'sharpness' or abruptness.


 * to clarify i am using the terms to indicate as follows:
 * plosive-some forcefulness as in p b d and some 'm' variants
 * aspirate-involvement of breathe and cavity eg chest mouth throat
 * stop- specific of aspirative plosive combination inclusive of nasal airflow ::limitation(?) ('m' not a stop)


 * thanks 90.218.158.244 (talk) 10:01, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Some of that is gobbledygook to me, so I'm not sure what you're trying to argue. — Æµ§œš¹  [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]  12:05, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

P in Arabic
This sound is also found is some Arabic dialects such as Iraqi, Moroccan, and Andalusi. It needs to be included in here.--169.231.49.10 (talk) 23:18, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

coincidence
we currently say
 * The stop /p/ is missing from about 10% of languages that have a /b/. (See voiced velar stop for another such gap.) This is an areal feature of the circum-Saharan zone (Africa north of the equator plus the Arabian peninsula). It is not known how old this areal feature is, and whether it might be a recent phenomenon due to Arabic as a prestige language (Arabic shifted /p/ to /f/ but the timing of this change is not known), or whether Arabic was itself affected by a more ancient areal pattern.

And a few of the words in that paragraph are mine. But I'd like to bring up a third possibility: that it's just a coincidence. So far as I know, there's not much evidence of contact influence in either direction across the Sahara until very recent times. This would be an exception, then, and require a good explanation.

Its possible, indeed perhaps most likely, that Arabic had already shifted /p/ > /f/ while it was still confined to the Arabian peninsula. If so, we can throw out the idea that Arabic lost its /p/ under influence from the indigenous languages of Sub-Saharan Africa or even North Africa. This would then require us to posit Arabic influence for the loss of /p/ in African languages, even though Arabic has had much greater and long-lasting influence over the languages of western Asia, from Turkey to India, and to my knowledge has not caused the loss of an inherited /p/ sound in any of them. Why would it be different in Africa?

I would like to have a paragraph presenting all three points of view, but I know how strict our sourcing policy is, and that I can't just add my thoughts that it might be a coincidence and then point to this talkpage argument when asked for evidence. But that made me notice that we don't have any references for the other two points of view either. Indeed it's possible no scholar has ever written a paper about this supposed influence phenomenon because there's no good evidence for causation in either direction and thus no need to write a paper arguing either in favor of or against it. As such it might be best for us to delete the whole paragraph, as much as I hate to erase hard work. — Soap — 09:53, 24 August 2023 (UTC)