The bilabial clicks are a family of click consonants that sound like a smack of the lips. They are found as phonemes only in the small Tuu language family (currently two languages, one down to its last speaker), in the ǂ’Amkoe languageofBotswana (also moribund), and in the extinct Damin ritual jargon of Australia. However, bilabial clicks are found paralinguistically for a kiss in various languages, including integrated into a greeting in the Hadza languageofTanzania, and as allophones of labial–velar stops in some West African languages (Ladefoged 1968), as of /mw/ in some of the languages neighboring Shona, such as Ndau and Tonga.
| Tenuis labial click (velar) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| k͜ʘ | |||
| ᵏʘ | |||
| ʘ | |||
| IPA Number | 176 | ||
| Audio sample | |||
| Encoding | |||
| Entity (decimal) | ʘ | ||
| Unicode (hex) | U+0298 | ||
| X-SAMPA | O\ | ||
| Braille |   | ||
| |||
| Voiced labial click (velar) | |
|---|---|
| ɡ͡ʘ | |
| ᶢʘ ᵇʘ | |
| Encoding | |
| X-SAMPA | O\_t |
| Nasal labial click (velar) | |
|---|---|
| ŋ͡ʘ | |
| ᵑʘ ᵐʘ | |
| Audio sample | |
| Encoding | |
| X-SAMPA | O\_~ |
| Tenuis labial click (uvular) | |
|---|---|
| q͡ʘ | |
| 𐞥ʘ |
| Voiced labial click (uvular) | |
|---|---|
| ɢ͡ʘ | |
| 𐞒ʘ |
| Nasal labial click (uvular) | |
|---|---|
| ɴ͡ʘ | |
| ᶰʘ |
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the place of articulation of these sounds is ⟨ʘ⟩. This may be combined with a second letter to indicate the manner of articulation, though this is commonly omitted for tenuis clicks.
In official IPA transcription, the click letter is combined with a ⟨k ɡ ŋ q ɢ ɴ⟩ via a tie bar, though ⟨k⟩ is frequently omitted. Many authors instead use a superscript ⟨k ɡ ŋ q ɢ ɴ⟩ without the tie bar, again often neglecting the ⟨k⟩. Either letter, whether baseline or superscript, is usually placed before the click letter, but may come after when the release of the velar or uvular occlusion is audible. A third convention is the click letter with diacritics for voicelessness, voicing and nasalization; it does not distinguish velar from uvular labial clicks. Common labial clicks are:
| Trans. I | Trans. II | Trans. III | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| (velar) | |||
| ⟨k͜ʘ⟩ | ⟨ᵏʘ⟩ | ⟨ʘ⟩ | tenuis bilabial click |
| ⟨k͜ʘʰ⟩ | ⟨ᵏʘʰ⟩ | ⟨ʘʰ⟩ | aspirated bilabial click |
| ⟨ɡ͜ʘ⟩ | ⟨ᶢʘ⟩ | ⟨ʘ̬⟩ | voiced bilabial click |
| ⟨ŋ͜ʘ⟩ | ⟨ᵑʘ⟩ | ⟨ʘ̬̃⟩ | bilabial nasal click |
| ⟨ŋ͜ʘ̥ʰʰ⟩ | ⟨ᵑʘ̥ʰʰ⟩ | ⟨ʘ̥̃ʰʰ⟩ | aspirated bilabial nasal click |
| ⟨ŋ͜ʘˀ⟩ | ⟨ᵑʘˀ⟩ | ⟨ʘ̃ˀ⟩ | glottalized bilabial nasal click |
| (uvular) | |||
| ⟨q͜ʘ⟩ | ⟨𐞥ʘ⟩ | tenuis bilabial click | |
| ⟨q͜ʘʰ⟩ | ⟨𐞥ʘʰ⟩ | aspirated bilabial click | |
| ⟨ɢ͜ʘ⟩ | ⟨𐞒ʘ⟩ | voiced bilabial click | |
| ⟨ɴ͜ʘ⟩ | ⟨ᶰʘ⟩ | bilabial nasal click | |
| ⟨ɴ͜ʘ̥ʰʰ⟩ | ⟨ᶰʘ̥ʰʰ⟩ | aspirated bilabial nasal click | |
| ⟨ɴ͜ʘˀ⟩ | ⟨ᶰʘˀ⟩ | glottalized bilabial nasal click | |
The last is what is heard in the sound sample at right, as non-native speakers tend to glottalize clicks to avoid nasalizing them.
Damin also had an egressive bilabial [ʘ↑], which may be an egressive click (if it is not buccal) and which is always followed by another consonant ([ɲ], [ŋ]or[pj]).[1]
Features of ingressive labial clicks:
The labial clicks are sometimes erroneously described as sounding like a kiss. However, they do not have the pursed lips of a kiss. Instead, the lips are compressed, more like a [p] than a [w], and they sound more like a noisy smack of the lips than a kiss.
The bullseyeorbull's eye (ʘ) symbol used in phonetic transcription of the phoneme was made an official part of the International Phonetic Alphabet in 1979, but had existed for at least 50 years earlier. It is encoded in UnicodeasU+0298 ʘ LATIN LETTER BILABIAL CLICK. The superscript IPA version is U+107B5 𐞵 MODIFIER LETTER BILABIAL CLICK.[4]
Similar graphemes consisting of a circled dot encoded by Unicode are:
A symbol called a turned b with a tail was created and is used in older publications.[citation needed] It was never widely used and was eventually dropped for ʘ. Still the deprecated IPA character is encoded at U+024B ɋ LATIN SMALL LETTER Q WITH HOOK TAIL. Earlier it is privately encodedbySIL InternationalatU+F211 <private-use-F211> and is available in SIL supporting fonts.[5]
English does not have a labial click (or any click consonant, for that matter) as a phoneme, but a plain bilabial click does occur in mimesis, as a lip-smacking sound children use to imitate a fish.
Labial clicks only occur in the Tuu and Kx'a families of southern Africa, and in the Australian ritual language Damin.
| Language | Word | IPA | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| ǂʼAmkoe (ǂHoan) | ʘoa | 'two' | |
| Damin | mǃi | [ᵑʘi] = [ʘ̃i] | 'vegetable' |
| Taa (ǃXóõ) | ʘàa | 'child' | |
| Nǁng (Nǀuu) | ʘũu | 'son' | |
Labial clicks may have arisen historically from labialization of other places of articulation. Starostin (2003)[6] notes that the ǂ’Amkoe words for 'one' and 'two', /ʘ̃ũ/ and /ʘoa/, have labial clicks whereas no other Khoisan language has a labial consonant of any kind in its words for these numerals, and Starostin (2007)[7] and Sands reconstruct a series of labialized clicks in Proto-Kxʼa, which became labial clicks in ǂ’Amkoe. In Hadza, the word for 'kiss', /ǀ̃ua/, becomes a mimetic /ǀ̃ʷa/or/ʘ̃ʷa/ in greetings.[8]
