Nasalized

Nasalized is an adjective describing speech sounds produced with nasal resonance, caused by lowering of the velum which allows air to flow through the nasal cavity during articulation. This results in a sound that is partly oral and partly nasal. Nasalization can affect vowels or, less commonly, other sounds, but vowels are the typical focus in discussion.

In many languages, nasal vowels are phonemic, meaning they distinguish words. French and Portuguese are well known for possessing phonemic nasal vowels. In other languages, nasalization is an allophonic effect that occurs due to the proximity of nasal consonants or syllable structure, such as a vowel becoming nasalized before a nasal consonant.

Phonetic transcription usually marks nasalization with a tilde above the vowel, as in [ã], [õ], or [ɛ̃]. Some analyses use a diacritic to indicate nasalization, and many orthographies write nasal vowels with special letters or diacritics (e.g., ã, ũ). Nasalization can also arise in connected speech through coarticulation, not necessarily indicating a phonemic contrast.

Clinically, nasalized speech may occur when the velum does not close properly, a condition known as velopharyngeal insufficiency. It can be evaluated in clinical settings and addressed in speech-language pathology and otolaryngology.

Related concepts include nasal consonants, nasal vowels, and the velum (soft palate), which together describe how nasal resonance is produced and analyzed in languages.