Voiceless bilabial plosive
A voiceless bilabial plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in most spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the "p" sound in "spit". The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is.
Features
Features of a voiceless bilabial plosive:Occurrence
Research has shown that incidental learning positively impacts the acquisition of the /p/ sound for Arabic speakers and other EFL learners. This is particularly interesting given that the stop is missing from about 10% of languages that have a. This is an areal feature of the circum-Saharan zone. 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, or whether Arabic was itself affected by a more ancient areal pattern. It is found in other areas as well; for example, Fijian, Onge, and many Papuan languages have but no.Nonetheless, the sound is very common cross-linguistically. Most languages have at least a plain, and some distinguish more than one variety. Many Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindustani, have a two-way contrast between the aspirated and the plain .