Denasalization

Type of sound and sound change in phonetics Partially denasalized◌͊IPA number654EncodingEntity (decimal)͊Unicode (hex)U+034A Image In phonetics, denasalization is the loss of nasal airflow in a nasal sound. That may be due to speech pathology but also occurs when the sinuses are blocked from a common cold, when it is called a nasal voice, which is not a linguistic term. Acoustically, it is the "absence of the expected nasal resonance." The symbol in the Extended IPA for partial denasalization is ⟨◌͊⟩. When one speaks with a cold, the nasal passages still function as a resonant cavity so a denasalized nasal [m͊] does not sound like a voiced oral stop [b], and a denasalized vowel [a͊] does not sound like an oral vowel [a]. However, there are cases of historical or allophonic denasalization that have produced oral stops. In some languages with nasal vowels, such as Paicĩ, nasal consonants may occur only before nasal vowels; before oral vowels, prenasalized stops are found. That allophonic variation is likely to be from a historical process of partial denasalization. Similarly, several languages around Puget Sound underwent a process of denasalization about 100 years