A voiced uvular nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a small capital version of the Latin letter n.
Uvular nasals are rare sounds cross-linguistically, occurring as a phoneme in only a small handful of languages. It is complex in terms of articulation, and also highly marked, as it is inherently difficult to produce a nasal articulation at the uvular point of contact. This difficulty can be said to account for the marked rarity of this sound among the world's languages.
A uvular nasal most commonly occurs as a conditioned allophone of other sounds, for example as an allophone of before a uvular plosive as in Quechua, or as an allophone of before another nasal consonant as in Selkup. However, it has been reported to exist as an independent phoneme in a small number of languages. Examples include the Klallam language, Tagalog language, the Tawellemmet and Ayr varieties of Tuareg Berber, the Rangakha dialect of Khams Tibetan, at least two dialects of the Bai language, the Papuan language Mapos Buang, and the Chamdo languages: Lamo (Kyilwa dialect), Larong sMar (Tangre Chaya dialect), Drag-yab sMar (Razi dialect). In Mapos Buang and in the Bai dialects, it contrasts phonemically with a velar nasal. In the Chamdo languages it contrasts phonemically with , , and . The syllable-final nasal in Japanese was traditionally said to be realized as a uvular nasal when utterance-final, but empirical studies have disputed this claim.
There is also a pre-uvular nasalInstead of "pre-uvular", these can be called "advanced uvular", "fronted uvular", "post-velar", "retracted velar" or "backed velar". For simplicity, this article uses only the term "pre-uvular". in some languages such as Yanyuwa, which is articulated slightly more front compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical uvular nasal, though not as front as the prototypical velar nasal. The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have a separate symbol for that sound, though it can be transcribed as (advanced ), or (both symbols denote a retracted ).
Features
Features of a voiced uvular nasal:
Occurrence
Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Afrikaans Many speakers 'pleasant' Allophone of before ; realized as in formal speech. See Afrikaans phonology Arabic Standard / 'coup' Allophone of before ; more commonly realized as . Armenian / 'brainless' Allophone of before a uvular consonant in informal speech. Bai Enqi dialect 'to walk' Phonemic, and contrasts with . Luobenzhuo dialect / 'I' Phonemic, and contrasts with . Bashkir / / 'wilderness' Allophone of in back vowel contexts. Dutch Netherlandic 'pleasant' Allophone of and before , in dialects that use it. Can be realized as in formal speech. English Northumbrian Georgian / 'hip joint' Allophone of before uvular consonants. Iñupiaq North Slope 'he will study' Corresponds to in other dialects. Inuvialuktun 'to where?' Allophonic; see Inuit phonology Kalaallisut 'crawls' Occurrence and phonemic status depend on the dialect. Kazakh / / 'new' Allophone of in back vowel contexts. Klallam 'big tree' Contrasts with a glottalized form, but not with . Lamo 'five' Contrasts with , , and . Malto 'to tell' is phonetically . is in Southern and Western dialects. See Malto language#Phonology. Mapos Buang 'widower' Phonemic, and contrasts with . Mongolian / / 'Mongolia' Allophone of . Okinawan 'grandmother' Post-glottal allophone of . Quechua Peruvian 'heart' Allophone of . Spanish 'shriveled' Allophone of . See Spanish phonology Turkmen 'bell' Allophone of next to back vowels. Yanyuwa 'adolescent boy' Pre-uvular; contrasts with post-palatal .
See also Index of phonetics articles
Notes
References
External links