Nasal Consonant - Other Kinds of Nasal Consonant

Other Kinds of Nasal Consonant

Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996) distinguish purely nasal consonants, the nasal occlusives such as m n ng in which the airflow is purely nasal, from partial nasal consonants such as prenasalized stops and prestopped nasals, which are nasal for only part of their duration, as well as from nasalized consonants, which have simultaneous oral and nasal airflow. In some languages, such as Portuguese, a nasal consonant may have occlusive and non-occlusive allophones. In general, therefore, a nasal consonant may be:

• a nasal occlusive, such as English m, n, ng
• a nasal approximant, as in Brazilian Portuguese nh
• a nasal flap, such as the nasal retroflex lateral flap in Pashto
• prenasalized stops and prestopped nasals
• a nasal click, such as Zulu nq, nx, nc
• other nasalized consonants, such as nasalized fricatives