English consonants

NASALS

• Pronounce the syllable /ba/ while holding your nose. Now try the same thing, replacing the /b/ with an "m" sound (as in mama). What can you conclude about the difference between /b/ and the sound of "m"? The the same thing with /d/ and the sound of "n". Also try to pronounce the word sing while holding your nose, and notice what happens to the final consonant (written with the letter combination "ng"). English nasal and lateral consonants have a complete stop-like contact in one place, but the air escapes somewhere else. One way to produce a sonorant consonant is to completely close the oral cavity, just as for a stop, but to open up the nasal cavity, the empty region behind the nostrils and above the oral cavity. This is achieved by lowering the velum, the flap at the back of the roof of the mouth. The nasal cavity and velum are shown in the figure below, in which the vocal tract is configured for the production of the sound at the beginning and end of the word mom. Such phones are called nasal consonants. For nasal consonants, the air is allowed to pass through the nasal cavity, but it also resonates in the oral cavity, and the place of articulation (within the oral cavity) distinguishes different nasal consonants from one another. English has three nasal consonant phonemes, at the bilabial, alveolar, and velar places of articulation. The bilabial nasal is the one at the beginning and end of the word mom; it is symbolized by /m/, so the pronunciation of mom is written /mͻm/. The alveolar nasal is the one at the beginning and end of the word none; it is symbolized by /n/, so the pronunciation of none is written /n^n/. The velar nasal is the one at the end of the word sing (this phoneme does not appear at the beginning of words in English); it is symbolized in this book by /ŋ/, which is close to the IPA symbol, so the pronunciation of sing is written /sɪŋ/.