Lably
Skip to content

Nasal vowel

Pronunciation of a vowel through the nose as well as the mouth

  • 5 min read
  • 5 chapters

Related on Lably

Through Vowel

LabVowels & Consonants

Nasalized vowels are vowels influenced by nearby sounds. For instance, the [] of the word hand in English is affected by the following nasal consonant. In most languages, vowels adjacent to nasal consonants are produced partially or fully with a lowered velum in a natural process of assimilation and are therefore technically nasal, but few speakers would notice. That is the case in English: vowels preceding nasal consonants are nasalized, but there is no phonemic distinction between nasal and oral vowels, and all vowels are considered phonemically oral.

Some languages contrast oral vowels and nasalized vowels phonemically. Linguists make use of minimal pairs to decide whether or not the nasality is of linguistic importance. In French, for instance, nasal vowels are distinct from oral vowels, and words can differ by the vowel quality. The words beau "beautiful" and bon "good" are a minimal pair that contrasts primarily the vowel nasalization even though the from bon is slightly more open.

Portuguese allows nasal diphthongs, which contrast with their oral counterparts, like the pair mau "bad" and mão "hand".

Although there are French loanwords in English with nasal vowels like croissant [], there is no expectation that an English-speaker would nasalize the vowels to the same extent as French-speakers or Portuguese-speakers. Likewise, pronunciation keys in English dictionaries do not always indicate nasalization of French or Portuguese loanwords.

Influence on vowel height

Nasalization as a result of the assimilation of a nasal consonant tends to cause a raising of vowel height; phonemically distinctive nasalization tends to lower the vowel. According to a different assessment, high vowels do tend to be lowered, but low vowels tend to be raised instead.

In most languages, vowels of all heights are nasalized indiscriminately, but preference occurs in some languages, such as for high vowels in Chamorro and low vowels in Thai.

Sign in to keep reading

4 more chapters are free with a Lably account.

More in Language and linguistics

Simplified Chinese charactersStandardized set of Chinese charactersSicIndicates an intentional reproduction in quotationProto-Indo-European languageAncestor of the Indo-European languagesLoanwordWord borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient languageOCLCGlobal library cooperativePhilologyStudy of language in historical sources