Editing Labiodental consonant (section)

==Occurrence==
The only common labiodental sounds to occur [[phoneme|phonemically]] are the fricatives and the approximant. The labiodental flap occurs phonemically in over a dozen languages, but it is restricted geographically to central and southeastern Africa.{{sfnp|Olson|Hajek|2003}} With most other [[Manner of articulation|manners of articulation]], the norm are [[bilabial consonant]]s (which together with labiodentals, form the class of [[labial consonant]]s).

{{IPA|[ɱ]}} is quite common, but in all or nearly all languages in which it occurs, it occurs only as an [[allophone]] of {{IPA|/m/}} before labiodental consonants such as {{IPA|/v/}} and {{IPA|/f/}}. It has been reported to occur phonemically in a dialect of [[Teke languages|Teke]], but similar claims in the past have proven spurious.

The XiNkuna dialect of [[Tsonga language|Tsonga]] features a pair of affricates as phonemes. In some other languages, such as [[Xhosa language|Xhosa]], affricates may occur as allophones of the fricatives. These differ from the [[German language|German]] [[voiceless labiodental affricate]] {{angbr|pf}}, which commences with a [[voiceless bilabial stop|bilabial p]]. All these affricates are rare sounds.{{cn|reason=This can't include the last example, since in German they are not rare.|date=November 2020}}

The stops are not confirmed to exist as separate [[phoneme]]s in any language. They are sometimes written as ''ȹ ȸ'' ''(qp'' and ''db'' [[Typographic ligature|ligature]]s). They may also be found in children's speech or as speech impediments.<ref>{{Cite journal |first1=Anne |last1=Hesketh |first2=Evgenia |last2=Dima |first3=Veronica |last3=Nelson |date=2007 |title=Teaching phoneme awareness to pre-literate children with speech disorder: a randomized controlled trial |url=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17514541/ |journal=International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders |language=en |volume=42 |issue=3 |pages=251–271 |doi=10.1080/13682820600940141 |issn=1368-2822 |pmid=17514541}}</ref>