Topic-068: Nasalization Nasalization is an articulatory process whereby a sound is made nasal (when the air is passing through the nasal cavity) due its adjacent nasal sound (it is an articulatory influence of an adjacent nasal consonant, as in words like mat or hand). A vowel can also be nasalised in words like man (when a maybe articulated with the soft palate lowered throughout, because of the nasal consonants influence (this is called anticipatory coarticulation). Remember that there is a difference between a nasal and a nasalised sound. A sound is nasalized when the nasality comes from other sounds (such as above where the vowel would be referred to as a nasalized vowel) whereas the nasal term suggests that the nasality is an essential identifying feature of a sound (in Urdu there are many nasal sounds. A nasalized consonant, on the other hand, is a consonant which, though normally oral, is articulated in a nasal manner because of some adjacent (nasal) sound.
