The /b/ sound in English
/b/ is the voiced bilabial stop — a consonant of English. Here is how to make it with your mouth, what usually goes wrong, which words carry it, and the sounds it gets confused with.
How to make the /b/ sound
Press both lips together and release them while the vocal folds are already vibrating, with no puff of air.
Practise it on its own before you put it in a word: hold the position, make the sound, then release. Once it is stable in isolation, drop it into the example words below and keep the same mouth shape — most of the difficulty of an English sound disappears the moment your tongue and lips are physically in the right place.
The mistake learners make with /b/
Devoicing /b/ at the end of a word so "cab" sounds like "cap"; English keeps the vowel long before a final /b/.
If that description sounds like you, work through the contrast pairs further down: hearing the difference reliably always comes before producing it reliably.
Words with the /b/ sound
Start with the classic three — bad, about, cab — then work through real words that contain /b/. Every word below has a full pronunciation page with audio and a sound-by-sound breakdown.
/b/ versus the sounds it gets confused with
These are the sounds that sit closest to /b/ in the mouth, and the ones that swallow it when a learner is not careful. Learn each pair as a pair:
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pPress both lips together, build up air behind them, then release with a puff of air (aspiration) when the sound starts a stressed syllable. Say “bad” (/b/) and “pen” (/p/) back to back until the two stop blurring together.
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vUpper teeth on the lower lip, push air through the gap, and add voicing so the lip buzzes. Say “bad” (/b/) and “very” (/v/) back to back until the two stop blurring together.
Questions about /b/
- How do you pronounce the /b/ sound?
- Press both lips together and release them while the vocal folds are already vibrating, with no puff of air.
- What words have the /b/ sound?
- bad, about, cab, business, been, buy, available, book, before — all contain /b/.
- What is /b/ called?
- /b/ is the voiced bilabial stop. It is a consonant in the English sound system.
Stop looking words up one at a time
One sound at a time is slow. PHONO puts the IPA above every word of whatever you are reading — in your browser, in a PDF, in any app — the moment you select it. An offline pronunciation dictionary, US and UK audio, one hotkey.