Phoneme Of The Week #1: The Voiced Labiodental Nasal
/ɱ/
audio source
Per Phoible, this sound occurs phonemically in 18 languages. This sound is very similar to the bilabial nasal, /m/, but instead of two lips touching, the upper teeth touch the bottom lip.
/ɱ/ is overwhelmingly an allophone to its fronter sibling /m/ when positioned before other labiodental consonants, such as /f/ and /v/. English speakers might find this sound to be in "symphony", "circumvent", "harmful". This sound on Wikipedia
This sound on Phoible
Glottist's notes: When I first saw this symbol in the beginnings of my interest in phonetics, I interpreted it as a velar bilabial nasal, as that hook on the bottom of our beloved labiodental nasal is borrowed from symbol for the velar nasal. While the labiovelar nasal occurs in 92 languages, co-articulation was at the time hard for me to even fathom.
