nasalizáció

Nasalizáció is a linguistic phenomenon where a vowel sound becomes nasalized, meaning that air passes through both the nose and the mouth during its production. This contrasts with oral vowels, where air exits solely through the mouth. Nasalization is often indicated by a tilde symbol (~) above the vowel in phonetic transcription.

This process typically occurs when a vowel is adjacent to a nasal consonant, such as /m/, /n/, or /ŋ/. For example, in French, the word "vin" (wine) has a nasalized vowel sound, whereas the word "vrai" (true) has an oral vowel. Many languages exhibit nasalized vowels, though the prevalence and the specific conditions under which they occur vary. Portuguese and Polish are well-known for their extensive use of nasal vowels.

In some languages, nasalization can change the meaning of a word, acting as a phonemic distinction. In others, it may be a purely phonetic process, an allophonic variation that does not alter word meaning. The degree of nasalization can also vary, ranging from slight nasal resonance to a fully nasal vowel. The perception and acoustic properties of nasalized vowels are distinct from their oral counterparts due to the resonance within the nasal cavity.