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المؤلف:  Parviz Birjandi

المصدر:  AN INTRODUCTION TO PHONETICS

الجزء والصفحة:  C3-P43

2026-07-04

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NASAL

You have already noted in the discussion of plosives that, in the articulation of some sounds, pulmonary air flows throw the nasal cavity to produce a nasal consonant. A nasal consonant is a consonant in which air escapes only through the nose. For this to happen, the soft dorsal part of the soft palate is lowered to allow air to pass it, whilst a closure is made somewhere in the oral cavity to stop air escaping through the mouth. You can feel if a sound is a nasal sound or not by placing your hand in front of your mouth and feeling if any air is escaping or not. There are three nasal sounds in English. The /m/ in mat /mæt/, the/n/ in not /nɒt/ and the /ŋ/ in sing /sɪŋ/ or think /θɪŋk/. The velar /ŋ/ does not occur in Persian. The Iranian learner of English, therefore, replaces the /ŋ/ phoneme by a sequence of two phonemes /n/, and /g/. In English, whenever the letter n appears before the letters g and k, it is pronounced as /ŋ/. Nasal sounds are considered to belong to the stop category along with plosives and affricates.

The nasal “occlusives” of the vast majority of the world's languages are voiced. Very few not-so-famous languages have voiceless nasals too. During the production of these nasal “occlusives”, the soft palate is lowered to a greater or lesser extent, allowing a portion of the airstream to pass through the nasal cavity. Occlusion occurs in the mouth only; the nasal resonance is continuous. Indeed, many linguists rank the nasals among the continuants. /m/ is a bilabial nasal. The mouth is configured just as for the corresponding bilabial stop /p/ and /b/. The lips are pressed tightly together. The air builds up and is suddenly released. /n/ is a dental or alveolar nasal. The mouth is configured just as for the corresponding dental or alveolar stop /t/ and /d/. The tongue makes contact either with the front teeth, or with the alveolar ridge directly above them. /ŋ/ is a velar nasal. The configuration of the mouth is very close to that of the corresponding velar stop /k/ and /g/. With the tongue tip resting against the lower teeth, the back of the tongue makes contact with the soft palate. But as the soft palate is lowered (to allow air to flow through the nasal cavity), the tongue's movement is more important for the nasal than for the oral sound.