Nasal Consonant

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the lips or tongue. Rarely, other types of consonants may be nasalized. Acoustically, nasal stops are sonorants, meaning they do not restrict the escape of air and cross-linguistically are nearly always voiced. Two notable exceptions are Icelandic and Welsh, which have unvoiced nasal sounds. (Compare oral plosives, which block off the air completely, and fricatives, which obstruct the air with a narrow channel. Both stops and fricatives are more commonly voiceless than voiced, and are known as obstruents.)