 | This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. (April 2018) |
| Voiced alveolar nasal | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| n | |||
| IPA number | 116 | ||
| Audio sample | |||
| Encoding | |||
| Entity (decimal) | n | ||
| Unicode (hex) | U+006E | ||
| X-SAMPA | n | ||
| Braille |  | ||
| |||
| Voiced dental nasal | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| n̪ | |||
| IPA number | 116 408 | ||
| Audio sample | |||
| Encoding | |||
| Entity (decimal) | n̪ | ||
| Unicode (hex) | U+006E U+032A | ||
| X-SAMPA | n_d | ||
| Braille |   | ||
| |||
| Voiced postalveolar nasal | |
|---|---|
| n̠ | |
| Audio sample | |
A voiced alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in numerous spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the ⟨n⟩ sound in nice. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar nasals is ⟨n⟩.
The vast majority of languages have either an alveolar or dental nasal.[citation needed] There are a few languages that lack either sound but have [m], such as Yoruba, Palauan, and colloquial Samoan (however, these languages all have [ŋ]. An example of a language without [n] and [ŋ] is Edo). There are some languages (e.g. Rotokas) that lack both [m] and [n].
True dental consonants are relatively uncommon. In the Romance, Dravidian, and Australian languages, n is often called "dental" in the literature. However, the rearmost contact, which gives a consonant its distinctive sound, is actually alveolar or denti-alveolar. The difference between the Romance languages and English is not so much where the tongue contacts the roof of the mouth but the part of the tongue that makes contact. In English, it is the tip of the tongue (such sounds are termed apical), but in the Romance languages, it is the flat of the tongue just above the tip (such sounds are called laminal).
However, there are languages with true apical dental n. It is found in the Mapuche language of South America, where it is actually interdental. A true dental generally occurs allophonically before /θ/ in the languages that have it, as in English tenth. Similarly, a denti-alveolar allophone occurs in languages that have denti-alveolar stops, as in Spanish cinta.
Some languages contrast laminal denti-alveolar and apical alveolar nasals. For example, in the Malayalam pronunciation of Nārāyanan, the first n is dental, the second is retroflex, and the third alveolar.
A voiced postalveolar nasal occurs in a number of Australian Aboriginal languages, including Djeebbana and Jingulu.
