A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both

through the nose as well as the mouth, such as the French vowel // (helpinfo). By contrast, oral
vowels are vowels without the nasalization. As explained below, nasal vowels that are distinctive or
obligatory are of far more linguistic importance than whether or not speakers of a language tend to
nasalize vowels in some instances. Relatively similar languages in the same branch of a language
family differ on this point quite frequently throughout the world, such as in Spanish and
Portuguese.[citation needed]
In most languages, vowels that are adjacent to nasal consonants are produced partially or fully with
a lowered velum in a natural process of assimilation and are therefore technically nasal, but few
speakers would notice. That is the case in English: vowels preceding nasal consonants are
nasalized, but there is no phonemic distinction between nasal and oral vowels (and all vowels are
considered phonemically oral).
However, the words "huh?" and "uh-huh" are pronounced with a nasal vowel, as is the negative
"unh-unh".[1]
In French, by contrast, nasal vowels are phonemes distinct from oral vowels, and words can differ by
this vowel quality. For example, the words beau /bo/ "beautiful" and bon /b/ "good" are a minimal
pair that contrasts primarily the vowel nasalization, even if the // from bon is slightly more open.
Portuguese behaves similarly, with minimal pairs as tumba /tba/ "tomb" and tuba /tuba/ "tuba",
except // and /u/ have the same openness. The language also allows nasal diphthongs that
contrast with their oral counterparts, like the minimal pair po /pw/ [pw
] "bread" and pau /paw/
[pa] "stick".
Although there are French loanwords into English with nasal vowels like croissant, there is no
expectation that an English speaker would nasalize the vowels to the same extent that French or
Portuguese speakers do. Likewise, pronunciation keys in English dictionaries do not always indicate
nasalization of French loanwords.

Contents
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1Vowel height and nasalization

2Degrees
3Orthography
4Examples of languages
5See also
6Notes

Vowel height and nasalization[edit]

Nasalization may cause a vowel's articulation to shift. However, nasalization from the assimilation of
a nasal consonant tends to cause a raising of vowel height; phonemically distinctive nasalization
tends to lower the vowel.[2]
In most languages, vowels of all heights are nasalized indiscriminately, but preference occurs in
some language, such as for high vowels in Chamorro and low vowels in Thai.[3]

Degrees[edit]
A few languages, such as Palantla Chinantec,[4] contrast lightly nasalized and heavily nasalized
vowels. They may be contrasted in print by doubling the IPA diacritic for nasalization: vs .
Bickford & Floyd (2006) combine the tilde with the ogonek: vs . (The ogonek is sometimes
used in an otherwise IPA transcription to avoid conflict with tone diacritics above the vowels.)