Nasal_vowel Nasal_vowel

Nasal vowel - Definition and Overview

Related Words: Allophone, Alveolar, Apical, Articulation, Aspiration, Assimilated, Assimilation, Asthmatic, Back, Bilabial, Breathing, Central, Cerebral, Check, Choking, Consonant

A nasal vowel is a vowel that produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through the mouth and the nose.

In many languages, vowels that are adjacent to nasal consonants are produced partially or fully with a lowered velum. In English, vowels preceding nasal consonants are nasalized, but there is no phonemic distinction between nasal and oral vowels (all vowels are considered phonemically oral).

In French, nasal vowels have phonemic status, since words can differ only in whether a vowel is nasalized or not. For example, the words sait "knows" and saint "saint" are pronounced the same, except the vowel in saint is nasal and the vowel in sait is oral.

Many languages do not have phonemic nasal vowels. For those that have them, it is commonly the case that there are less nasal vowels than oral ones. This appears to be caused by the loss of distinctivity produced by the nasal articulation.

Example Usage of Nasal

sutton789: 219$ for my Nasal spray
RegiTizzle: RT @eatshitderek: @LaPrece look like he snort coke lines off Wii Fit boards, and wash it down w/ Vicks Vapor Rub Nasal spray.<--- GNR GNR
foureyesgood: @paulshore01 who the fuck is davo?glad he beat Nasal tho.
Copyright 2009 WordIQ.com - Privacy Policy  :: Terms of Use  :: Contact Us  :: About Us
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the this Wikipedia article.