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nasal consonant

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nasal consonant

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Also known as nasal, nasal occlusive, nasal stop

consonant pronounced by letting air escape through the nose but not through the mouth

AI overview

A nasal consonant is a type of speech sound made by blocking air from coming out of your mouth while letting it flow through your nose instead. These sounds matter because they're fundamental building blocks in most languages around the world—in English, for example, the "m" and "n" sounds are nasal consonants that help us distinguish different words from each other.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

~14 min read

Encyclopedic overview

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In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majority of consonants are oral consonants. Examples of nasals in English are [n], [ŋ] and [m], in words such as nose, bring and mouth.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “nasal consonant” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.