The Bilabial nasal reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Bilabial nasal

The bilabial nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is m, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is m.

IPA - Unicode	m
IPA - image
X-SAMPA	m

Features of this consonant:

• Its manner of articulation is plosive or stop, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract.
• Its place of articulation is bilabial which means it is articulated with both lips,
• Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
• It is a nasal consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the nose.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the center of the tongue, rather than the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

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