Nasalization - Other Nasal(ized) Consonants

Other Nasal(ized) Consonants

Nasalized versions of other consonant sounds also exist, though they are much rarer than either nasal occlusives or nasal vowels. Some of the South Arabic languages have phonemic nasalized fricatives, such as /z̃/, which sounds something like a simultaneous and . The sound written ⟨r⟩ in Mandarin has an odd history; for example, it has been borrowed into Japanese as both and . It seems likely that it was once a nasalized fricative, perhaps a palatal . In the Hupa velar nasal /ŋ/, the tongue often does not make full contact, resulting in a nasalized approximant, . This is cognate with a nasalized palatal approximant in other Athabaskan languages. In Umbundu, phonemic /ṽ/ contrasts with the (allophonically) nasalized approximant, and so is likely to be a true fricative rather than an approximant. In Old and Middle Irish, the lenited ⟨m⟩ was a nasalized bilabial fricative. Sundanese has an allophonic nasalized glottal stop ; nasalized stops can only occur with pharyngeal articulation or lower, or else they'd be simple nasals. Nasal flaps are common allophonically. Many West African languages have a nasal flap (or ) as an allophone of /ɾ/ before a nasal vowel; Pashto, however, has a phonemic nasal retroflex lateral flap.