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Tenuis bilabial click - Wikipedia

The voiceless or more precisely tenuis bilabial click is a click consonant found in some languages of southern Africa. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet for a tenuis bilabial click with a velar rear articulation is ⟨k͡ʘ⟩ or ⟨k͜ʘ⟩, commonly abbreviated to ⟨⟩, ⟨ᵏʘ⟩ or just ⟨ʘ⟩. For a click with a uvular rear articulation, the equivalents are ⟨q͡ʘ, q͜ʘ, qʘ, 𐞥ʘ⟩. Sometimes the accompanying letter comes after the click letter, e.g. ⟨ʘk⟩ or ⟨ʘᵏ⟩; this may be a simple orthographic choice, or it may imply a difference in the relative timing of the releases.[1]

Tenuis bilabial click
ʘ
IPA Number176
Audio sample
Encoding
Entity (decimal)ʘ
Unicode (hex)U+0298
Braille⠯ (braille pattern dots-12346)⠏ (braille pattern dots-1234)
Tenuis bilabial uvular click
q͡ʘ
𐞥ʘ

Features

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Features of the tenuis bilabial click:

  • The airstream mechanism is lingual ingressive (also known as velaric ingressive), which means a pocket of air trapped between two closures is rarefied by a "sucking" action of the tongue, rather than being moved by the glottis or the lungs/diaphragm. The release of the forward closure produces the "click" sound. Voiced and nasal clicks have a simultaneous pulmonic egressive airstream.
  • Its place of articulation is bilabial, which means it is articulated with both lips.
  • Its phonation is voiceless, unaspirated, and unglottalized, which means it is produced without vibration or constriction of the vocal cords, and any following vowel starts without significant delay.
  • 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 centrallateral dichotomy does not apply.

Occurrence

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Tenuis bilabial clicks are only known to occur in the Tuu and Kx'a families of southern Africa.

Language Word IPA Meaning
ǂHoan [k͡ʘoa] 'two'
Taa [k͡ʘàa] 'child'

Notes

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  1. ^ Afrika und Übersee. D. Reimer. 2005. pp. 93–94.