Voiceless labiodental nasal

Voiceless labiodental nasal
Voiceless labiodental nasal
ɱ̊
m̪̊
Audio sample
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Encoding
X-SAMPA	F_0

A voiceless labiodental nasal (stop) is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɱ̊⟩, a combination of the letter for the voiced labiodental nasal and a diacritic indicating voicelessness, in certain sources, the voicelessness diacritic can be found below ⟨ɱ̥⟩.^[1]

Features

Features of a voiceless labiodental nasal:

It is a nasal consonant, which means air is exclusively allowed to escape through the nose for nasal stops; otherwise, in addition to through the mouth.
Its place of articulation is labiodental, which means it is articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.
Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.
Because the sound is not produced with airflow over the tongue, the median–lateral dichotomy does not apply.
Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air only with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Angami^[1]		pemhewaché	[pfəɱ̊ʰəwat͡ʃe]^[2]	'extinguish'	Allophone of /m̥ʰ/ before /ə/.
Kinyamwezi^[3]		mfulá	[ɱ̊fulá]	'good'	Allophone of class-9/10 nasal prefix /N/ before /f/.

^ ^a ^b Blankenship, B. "Phonetic structures of Khonoma Angami" (PDF).
^ McCabe (1887). Outline Grammar of the Angami Naga Language with a vocabulary and illustrative sentences. p. 36. Retrieved 9 December 2025.
^ Maganga, Clement; Schadeberg, Thilo C. (1992). Kinyamwezi: Grammar, Texts, Vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe. pp. 15–53.