[b]→[∅]Certainty: 5/5Commonality: 4/5

Voiced bilabial plosive to Empty sound / Zero

The 'disappearing B' is a common phenomenon in language history, where the voiced bilabial stop weakens and eventually vanishes entirely, particularly in weak phonetic positions.

Phonetic Effects

Lenition, Elision, Deletion

Language Examples

English Germanic

camb→comb— Post-nasal deletion in word-final position.

lamb→lam— Loss of final [b] after [m].

French Romance

habere→avoir/a— Latin intervocalic [b] shifts to [v] and then elides in certain conjugated forms like 'il a'.

Spanish Romance

sabado→sa'ado— Colloquial deletion of intervocalic [β] in rapid speech.

Related Transformations

Spirantization Epenthesis

More Romance Shifts

[ã] → [õ] — Raising [a] → [ã] — Assimilatory Nasalization [a] → [∅] — Elision [a] → [ʔ] — Glottalization [a] → [ə] — Vowel Reduction

Sources & References

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