In
phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...
, nasalization (or nasalisation in
British English
British English is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom, especially Great Britain. More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to ...
) is the production of a sound while the
velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is .
In the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...
, nasalization is indicated by printing a
tilde diacritic above the symbol for the sound to be nasalized: is the nasalized equivalent of , and is the nasalized equivalent of . A subscript diacritic , called an or , is sometimes seen, especially when the vowel bears
tone marks that would interfere with the superscript tilde. For example, are more legible in most fonts than .
Nasal vowels
Many languages have nasal
vowel
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
s to different degrees, but only a minority of world languages around the world have nasal vowels as contrasting phonemes. That is the case, among others, of
French,
Portuguese,
Hindustani,
Nepali,
Breton,
Gheg Albanian,
Hmong,
Hokkien
Hokkien ( , ) is a Varieties of Chinese, variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese language, Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred ...
,
Yoruba, and
Cherokee
The Cherokee (; , or ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern ...
. Those nasal vowels contrast with their corresponding
oral vowels. Nasality is usually seen as a binary feature, although surface variation in different degrees of nasality caused by neighboring
nasal consonant
In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majo ...
s has been observed.
Degree of nasality
There are languages, such as in
Palantla Chinantec, where vowels seem to exhibit three contrastive degrees of nasality: oral e.g. vs lightly nasalized vs heavily nasalized , although Ladefoged and Maddieson believe that the lightly nasalized vowels are best described as oro-nasal
diphthong
A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...
s. Note that Ladefoged and Maddieson's transcription of heavy nasalization with a double tilde might be confused with the
extIPA adoption of that diacritic for
velopharyngeal frication.
Nasal consonants
By far the most common nasal sounds are
nasal consonant
In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majo ...
s such as , or . Most nasal consonants are occlusives, and airflow through the mouth is blocked and redirected through the nose. Their oral counterparts are the
stops.
Nasalized consonants
Nasalized versions of other consonant sounds also exist but are much rarer than either nasal occlusives or nasal vowels. The
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese language, Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expande ...
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...
日 (; in modern
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese ( zh, s=现代标准汉语, t=現代標準漢語, p=Xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ, l=modern standard Han speech) is a modern standard form of Mandarin Chinese that was first codified during the republican era (1912–1949). ...
) has an odd history; for example, it has evolved into and (or and respectively, depending on accents) in
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese ( zh, s=现代标准汉语, t=現代標準漢語, p=Xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ, l=modern standard Han speech) is a modern standard form of Mandarin Chinese that was first codified during the republican era (1912–1949). ...
; / and in
Hokkien
Hokkien ( , ) is a Varieties of Chinese, variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese language, Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred ...
; / and / while borrowed into Japan. It seems likely that it was once a nasalized fricative, perhaps a palatal .
In
Coatzospan Mixtec, fricatives and affricates are nasalized before nasal vowels even when they are voiceless. In the
Hupa, the
velar nasal
The voiced velar nasal, also known as eng, engma, or agma (from Greek 'fragment'), is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''E ...
often has the tongue not make full contact, resulting in a nasalized approximant, . That is
cognate
In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language.
Because language change can have radical effects on both the s ...
with a
nasalized palatal approximant in other
Athabaskan languages
Athabaskan ( ; also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large branch of the Na-Dene languages, Na-Dene language family of North America, located in western North America in three areal language ...
.
In
Umbundu, phonemic contrasts with the (
allophonically) nasalized approximant and so is likely to be a true fricative rather than an approximant. In
Old and
Middle Irish
Middle Irish, also called Middle Gaelic (, , ), is the Goidelic language which was spoken in Ireland, most of Scotland and the Isle of Man from AD; it is therefore a contemporary of Late Old English and Early Middle English. The modern Goideli ...
, the
lenited was a nasalized bilabial fricative .
Ganza has a phonemic nasalized
glottal stop
The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic ...
while
Sundanese has it allophonically; nasalized stops can occur only with pharyngeal articulation or lower, or they would be simple nasals. Nasal
flaps are common allophonically. Many West African languages have a nasal flap (or ) as an allophone of before a nasal vowel;
voiced retroflex nasal flaps are common intervocalic allophones of in South Asian languages.
A nasal trill has been described from some dialects of Romanian, and is posited as an intermediate historical step in
rhotacism. However, the phonetic variation of the sound is considerable, and it is not clear how frequently it is actually trilled. Some languages contrast like
Toro-tegu Dogon and
Inor. A nasal lateral has been reported for some languages,
Nzema contrasts ,
Nemi contrasts .
Other languages, such as the
Khoisan languages
The Khoisan languages ( ; also Khoesan or Khoesaan) are a number of Languages of Africa, African languages once classified together, originally by Joseph Greenberg. Khoisan is defined as those languages that have click languages, click consonant ...
of
Khoekhoe and
Gǀui, as well as several of the
!Kung languages, include
nasal click consonants. Nasal clicks are typically with a nasal or superscript nasal preceding the consonant (for example, velar-dental or and uvular-dental or ). Nasalized laterals such as (a nasalized lateral alveolar click) are easy to produce but rare or nonexistent as phonemes; nasalized lateral clicks are common in Southern African languages such as
Zulu. Often when is nasalized, it becomes .
True nasal fricatives
Besides nasalized oral fricatives, there are true nasal fricatives, or ''anterior nasal fricatives'', previously called ''nareal fricatives''. They are sometimes produced by people with
disordered speech. The
turbulence
In fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is fluid motion characterized by chaotic changes in pressure and flow velocity. It is in contrast to laminar flow, which occurs when a fluid flows in parallel layers with no disruption between ...
in the airflow characteristic of
fricative
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in ...
s is produced not in the mouth but at the
anterior nasal port, the narrowest part of the
nasal cavity
The nasal cavity is a large, air-filled space above and behind the nose in the middle of the face. The nasal septum divides the cavity into two cavities, also known as fossae. Each cavity is the continuation of one of the two nostrils. The nas ...
. (Turbulence can also be produced at the posterior nasal port, or velopharyngeal port, when that port is narrowed – see
velopharyngeal fricative. With anterior nasal fricatives, the velopharyngeal port is open.) A superimposed homothetic sign that resembles a
colon divided by a tilde is used for this in the
extensions to the IPA: is a voiced alveolar nasal fricative, with no airflow out of the mouth, and is the voiceless equivalent; is an oral fricative with simultaneous nasal frication. No known language makes use of nasal fricatives in non-disordered speech.
Denasalization
Nasalization may be lost over time. There are also
denasal sounds, which sound like nasals spoken with a head cold. They may be found in non-pathological speech as a language loses nasal consonants, as in
Korean.
Contextual nasalization
Vowels assimilate to surrounding
nasal consonant
In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majo ...
s in many languages, such as
Thai, creating nasal vowel allophones. Some languages exhibit a nasalization of
segments adjacent to phonemic or allophonic
nasal vowels, such as
Apurinã.
Contextual nasalization can lead to the addition of nasal vowel phonemes to a language.
That happened in French, most of whose final consonants disappeared, but its final nasals made the preceding vowels become nasal, which introduced a new distinction into the language. An example is , ultimately from
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
and .
See also
*
Eclipsis, a similar process in Gaelic that is often called "nasalization"
*
Nasal consonant
In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majo ...
*
Nasal release
*
Nasal vowel
A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel /ɑ̃/ () or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are p ...
*Nasality (disorder), Nasality
*Prenasalized consonant
References
Works cited
*
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