Voiceless bilabial stop
The voiceless bilabial stop is a type of consonantal sound used in most spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is p.Features of the voiceless bilabial stop:Varieties
Occurrence
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, in Europe, Proto-Celtic and Old Basque are both reconstructed as having 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 .Examples
