Tenuis bilabial velar click
k??
??
?
IPA Number	176
Audio sample
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Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ʘ
Unicode (hex)	U+0298
Braille

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 ⟨ k?? ⟩ or ⟨ k?? ⟩, commonly abbreviated to ⟨ k? ⟩, ⟨ ?? ⟩ or just ⟨ ? ⟩. For a click with a uvular rear articulation, the equivalents are ⟨ q??, q??, q?, ??? ⟩. Sometimes the accompanying letter comes after the click letter, e.g. ⟨ ?k ⟩ or ⟨ ?? ⟩; this may be a simple orthographic choice, or it may imply a difference in the relative timing of the releases. ^[1]

Features [ edit ]

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 central ? lateral dichotomy does not apply.

Occurrence [ edit ]

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

Notes [ edit ]