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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) 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 transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
, 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
ogonek The (; Polish: , "little tail", diminutive of ) is a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in several European languages, and directly under a vowel in several Native American languages. It i ...
or ''nosinė'', 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 syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (l ...
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 French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
, Portuguese,
Hindustani Hindustani may refer to: * something of, from, or related to Hindustan (another name of India) * Hindustani language, an Indo-Aryan language, whose two official norms are Hindi and Urdu * Fiji Hindi, a variety of Eastern Hindi spoken in Fiji, and ...
,
Nepali Nepali or Nepalese may refer to : Concerning Nepal * Anything of, from, or related to Nepal * Nepali people, citizens of Nepal * Nepali language, an Indo-Aryan language found in Nepal, the current official national language and a language spoken ...
, Breton,
Gheg Albanian Gheg (also spelled Geg; Gheg Albanian: ''gegnishtja'', Standard sq, gegërishtja) is one of the two major varieties of Albanian, the other being Tosk. The geographic dividing line between the two varieties is the Shkumbin River, which winds ...
, Hmong, Hokkien,
Yoruba The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba consti ...
, and
Cherokee The Cherokee (; chr, ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, translit=Aniyvwiyaʔi or Anigiduwagi, or chr, ᏣᎳᎩ, links=no, translit=Tsalagi) are one of the indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, th ...
. 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 major ...
s has been observed.


Degree of nasality

There are occasional 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 diphthongs. 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 major ...
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 Stop may refer to: Places *Stop, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in the United States * Stop (Rogatica), a village in Rogatica, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina Facilities * Bus stop * Truck stop, a type of rest stop for truck dri ...
.


Nasalized consonants

Nasalized versions of other consonant sounds also exist but are much rarer than either nasal occlusives or nasal vowels. The Middle Chinese
consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced ...
Radical 72 or radical sun () meaning "sun" or " day" is one of the 34 Kangxi radicals (214 radicals in total) composed of 4 strokes. In the ''Kangxi Dictionary'', there are 453 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical. is also ...
(; in modern
Standard Chinese Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern Standar ...
) has an odd history; for example, it has evolved into and (or and respectively, depending on accents) in
Standard Chinese Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern Standar ...
; / and in Hokkien; / 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 Hupa (Yurok language term: Huep'oola' / Huep'oolaa = "Hupa people") are a Native American people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group in northwestern California. Their endonym is Natinixwe, also spelled Natinook-wa, meaning "Peopl ...
, the velar nasal 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 in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical e ...
with a
nasalized palatal approximant The nasal palatal approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some oral languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , that is, a j with a tilde. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j~, and in the ...
in other Athabaskan languages. In Umbundu, phonemic contrasts with the ( allophonically) nasalized approximant and so is likely to be a true fricative rather than an approximant. In
Old Old or OLD may refer to: Places *Old, Baranya, Hungary *Old, Northamptonshire, England *Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD) *OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, Mai ...
and Middle Irish, the lenited was a nasalized bilabial fricative. Sundanese has an allophonic nasalized
glottal stop The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
; 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;
Pashto Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani (). Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official languag ...
, however, has a phonemic nasal retroflex lateral flap. Other languages, such as the Khoisan languages 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-palatal or and uvular-palatal or ). Nasalized laterals such as are easy to produce but rare or nonexistent as phonemes; allophonically, they may appear in some Portuguese words like ''enlatar'' or ''enlamear''. 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 the airflow characteristic of
fricative A fricative is a consonant manner of articulation, produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two Place of articulation, articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the ba ...
s is produced not in the mouth but at the anterior nasal port, the narrowest part of the nasal cavity. (Turbulence can also be produced at the posterior nasal port, or velopharyngeal port, when that port is narrowed – see
velopharyngeal fricative A velopharyngeal fricative, also known as a posterior nasal fricative, is a sound produced by some children with speech disorders, including some with a cleft palate, as a substitute for sibilants (), which cannot be produced with a cleft pala ...
. 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 major ...
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.The World Atlas of Language Structures Online �
Chapter 10 – Vowel Nasalization
/ref> 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 ''vin blanc'' ('white wine'), ultimately from
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...
''vinum'' and ''blancum''.


See also

*
Eclipsis Irish, like all modern Celtic languages, is characterized by its initial consonant mutations. These mutations affect the initial consonant of a word under specific morphological and syntactic conditions. The mutations are an important to ...
, 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 major ...
* 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 or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are produced wit ...
*Nasality (disorder), Nasality *Prenasalized consonant


References

{{articulation navbox Nasalization, Phonetics Phonology Historical linguistics Assimilation (linguistics)