Vowel Height and Nasalization
Nasalization may cause a vowel's articulation to shift. However, while nasalization due to the assimilation of a nasal consonant will tend to cause a raising of the vowel's height, phonemically distinctive nasalization tends to lower the vowel. In most languages, vowels of all heights are nasalized indiscriminately, but preference occurs in select few languages, such as to high vowels in Chamorro and low vowels in Thai.
Read more about this topic: Nasal Vowel
Famous quotes containing the words vowel and/or height:
“Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“I cannot help wondering sometimes what I might have become and might have done if I had lived in a country which had not circumscribed and handicapped me on account of my race, but had allowed me to reach any height I was able to attain.”
—Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954)