Everything about Nasalization totally explained
In
phonetics,
nasalization 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. The effect is as if an [n] sound were produced simultaneously with the oral sound.
In the
International Phonetic Alphabet nasalization is indicated by printing a
tilde above the symbol for the sound to be nasalized: [ã] is the nasalized equivalent of [a], and [ṽ] is the nasalized equivalent of [v]. An older IPA subscript diacritic [ą], called an
ogonek, is still seen, especially when the vowel bears
tone marks that would interfer with the superscript tilde. For example, [ą̄ą́ ą̀ ą̂ ą̌] are more legible in most fonts than [ã̄ã́ ã̀ ã̂ ã̌].
Nasal vowels
The most common nasalized sounds are nasal vowels. These are found in many languages, such as
French,
Portuguese,
Breton,
Polish, as well as in several other language families outside Europe. Many languages, however, only have
oral vowels; this is the case, among others, of
English — with the possible exception of the
Texas "
twang".
There are occasional cases where vowels show contrasting degrees of nasality.
Nasalized consonants
However, there are also nasalized consonants which contrast with purely oral consonants. Some of the
South Arabic languages have nasalized fricatives, such as [z̃], which sounds something like a simultaneous [n] and [z]. The sound written
r in
Mandarin has an odd history; for example, it has been borrowed into
Japanese as both [z] and [n]. It seems likely that it was once a nasalized fricative, perhaps a palatal [ʝ̃]. In the
Hupa velar nasal /ŋ/, the tongue often doesn't make full contact, resulting in a nasalized approximant, [ɰ̃]. This is
cognate with a nasalized [ȷ̃] in other
Athabaskan languages. In
Umbundu, phonemic [ṽ] contrasts with (
allophonically) nasalized [w̃], and so is likely to be a true fricative rather than an approximant.
Phonologically speaking, nothing prevents from describing
nasal stops such as /m/, /n/ or /ŋ/ as the nasalized counterpart of voiced oral stops. In theory, these nasal consonants could therefore perfectly be represented as, respectively, /b̃/, /d̃/ or /g̃/. The only reason why these nasal consonants have their own symbol is their frequency in the world's languages – in contrast, for example, with the nasal(ized) constrictives (for example, [ṽ]).
Nasal stops are called stops because airflow through the mouth is blocked, but air flows freely through the nose.
Nareal consonants
Besides nasalized oral fricatives, there are true nasal fricatives, called
nareal fricatives, sometimes produced by people with speech defects. That is, the turbulence in the airflow characteristic of fricatives is produced not in the mouth but in the nasal passages. A tilde plus
trema diacritic is used for this in the
Extensions to the IPA: [n͋] is an alveolar nareal fricative, with no airflow out of the mouth, while [v͋] is an oral fricative (a [v]) with simultaneous nareal frication. No known natural language makes use of nareal consonants.
Denasalization
Nasalization may be lost over time. There are also
denasal sounds, which sound like nasals spoken with a head cold, but these are not used in non-pathological speech.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Nasalization'.
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