What are good romanizations for the labiodental stops?

[Bob]

What are good romanizations for the (labiodental stops)?

voiceless labiodental stop
IPA: p̪

voiced labiodental stop
IPA: b̪

I'm doing a conlang based on Modern English orthography today and I have lots of background in Old, Middle, and Early Modern English orthographies.

So I'm going with fh and vh.

We have a lot of digraphs (two letters used to write one sound) in English which are letter + h = digraph. I think we got this from Latin who maybe got it from Etruscan. I think the older, more Greek method is to double the letter, which is where F and G came from.

I much prefer doubling letters these days, if anything, but for the sake of this conlang's concept, I'm going with fh and vh. I could go ph and bh but ph already occurs in English orthography a bit and I want to add a bit of a thrill.

I never encountered a language with these sounds as phonemes. Has anyone here? I haven't looked them up on Wikipedia. Wikipedia's always good for that sort of thing.

I can work with all kinds of non-English sounds but I don't like them in my conlangs the last 5 or more years. I like 5 vowels and about as many phonemes as English, or less. Recently, though, it just so happened that the thought of labiodental stops popped into my mind.

[zyxw59]

I like ȹ and ȸ.

[Curlyjimsam]

They don't occur for a good reason - they are really hard to distinguish acoustically from the bilabial stops. Give it a go yourself and you'll see what I mean.

[mèþru]

<fh> signifies a fricative to me

[Salmoneus]

They don't occur for a good reason - they are really hard to distinguish acoustically from the bilabial stops. Give it a go yourself and you'll see what I mean.

They're also impossible to make if you don't have perfect teeth, which many people in ye olden days did not.

[TurkeySloth]

<h> is a bad choice with which to Romanize any stop/plosive because the aspirants either are stable, as in English, or become fricatives, as in Ancient Greek. That said, the labiodental stops tend to be Romanized as <p> and <b> because they're relegated to allophonic status for reasons mentioned before.

[Pabappa]

And still don't (almost all small children and many healthy adults have gaps between their front teeth). However, as long as you permit [pf bv] as acceptable pronunciations, i think true labiodental stops are viable phonemes. Ive used them in just a few languages ... ṗ works great for the voiceless stop and b with underdot for the voiced stop. Apparently the latter is not found in Unicode as a single character but I can type it on my big screen PC using deadkeys.

Also, I've used ph/bh andithink it works perfectly fine as well. Th is used for stops in Australia, India, etc

[anteallach]

I would suggest <pf> and <bv>. Ladefoged and Maddieson suggest that in one of the few languages where they do occur, Shubi, there is variation between labiodental stops and German-like bilabial-labiodental affricates, which you don't need perfect teeth to make. (The passage is quoted word for word on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shubi_language )

<fh> signifies a fricative to me

In the languages I am most familiar with which use it (Scottish Gaelic and Irish) it is usually silent but occasionally /h/.

[Zaarin]

I think we got this from Latin who maybe got it from Etruscan.

Latin used it to represent aspirated stops in Greek and Punic (and perhaps other languages?); English mostly uses it in the same places except that Greek aspirated stops spirantized, which is reflected also in English pronunciations (except of <ch> < CHI*). (We have native <th> to replace <þ ð> when they went out of fashion; native <ch> merely represents the palatalized /k/ from Old English, which became phonemic in Middle English.)

*Why is Greek small letter chi indistinguishable from Latin small letter eks in this board's font?

[Bob]

zyxw59: Thank-you for your reply.

I never heard of these ȹ letters. Thank-you for sharing.

Curlyjimsam: Thank-you for your reply.

Oh, wow! But that does make sense. I've heard things like that of the weird but possible parts of the IPA chart.

letter+h also can be used to just make a digraph, I think. Sh is not a fricative version of s. Otherwise, I got nothing. Ch is not a fricative version of c. Welll ...

Salmoneus: Thank-you for your reply. That's such a clever point you made.

yangfiretiger121: Thank-you for your reply.

Well, I was hoping more for creative Romanizations. Maybe I should have been more specific.

Pabappa: Thank-you for your reply.

anteallach: Thank-you for your reply.

So interesting.

I somewhat feel like I'm wasting your peoples' time though because you all seem so educated and talented. Oh, well, your call.

Zaarin: Thank-you for your reply.

...

What a fun topic. I never encountered a language with these labiodental stops in them. Only someone like Ladefoged, surveying all living languages for their phonologies, would encounter such a thing. This, then, is my forray into such an area of linguistics. Me, I study hieroglyphic writing systems; my joys are otherwise. I do get a kick comparing affricates in Mandarin, Mayan Hieroglyphic, and Old Georgian, though. But that's about it. You can't have it all. Earlier I posted my own unique way of simply pronouncing 1600s Massachusett and no one gave me a pat on the back or anything. Wow, tough crowd, man.

[Birdlang]

You could use a p and b with a stroke through them like these too.
ᵽ ƀ.

[Bob]

Birdlang, thank-you for your response.

[Xwtek]

pf and bv