# Is the consonant [b] always voiced across languages? What about [p]? Tags: consonants, voicing, stops, plosives, bilabial - Score: 2 - Views: 1637 - Answers: 3 - Answered: yes - Asked by: dmonopoly (343 rep) - Asked: 2013-01-19 - Edited: 2013-01-20 - Site: linguistics ## Question Is the consonant [b] always voiced across languages? What about [p] being voiceless? Similarly, is [k] always voiceless across languages? Basically, I am taking what I know in English and wondering if it applies more broadly. ## Answers ### Answer by Mechanical snail (score: 7 [ACCEPTED]) It depends on what is meant by "[b]". Usually, a transcription in brackets means that it's a phonetic transcription, which aims to represent the sounds uttered without considering whether the language makes a phonemic distinction between them. Under the strictest interpretation, [b] is voiced by definition, since that IPA symbol represents the voiced bilabial plosive. In other words, the "cardinal" or prototypical value of [b] is voiced. But more commonly, phonetic transcriptions can also be broad, meaning that they notate only the most salient features, or those that are likely to be linguistically signific