Nasalisación

Nasalisación is a phonological process where a vowel sound becomes nasalized, meaning air is expelled through both the mouth and the nose. This occurs when a vowel is adjacent to a nasal consonant, such as /m/, /n/, or /ŋ/. The velum, or soft palate, lowers during the articulation of the vowel, allowing air to resonate in the nasal cavity.

The degree of nasalisación can vary across languages and even within the same language. In some languages, like French, nasalisación is a distinctive feature, meaning that a nasalized vowel can differentiate the meaning of words. For example, the French words "beau" (beautiful) and "bon" (good) have different vowel sounds, with the latter featuring a nasalized vowel. In other languages, such as English, nasalisación is often considered allophonic, meaning it is a predictable variation of a vowel sound that does not change the word's meaning. For instance, the vowel in "can" is typically nasalized because it precedes the nasal consonant /n/.

The phonetic transcription of nasalized vowels often uses a tilde (~) symbol above the vowel, for example, /ã/. This process is a common area of study in phonetics and phonology, contributing to our understanding of the diverse ways humans produce speech sounds.