can someone tell me something about the nasal vowels in American English?
nasality of vowels
Nasalization in my dialect (I am from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for the record) is very similar to that in Joshs, aside from elision before homorganic stops not being obligatory in it, but there is one important difference: in my dialect, intervocalic /n/, /nt/, and at times /nd/ can be lost, leaving the vowel before such nasalized, or if the preceding vowel forms a diphthong with the following vowel, leaving the resulting diphthong nasalized. Another important note is that when clusters like /dn/ or /bm/, or the sequences /d@n/ or /b@m/, are assimilated to [n:] and [m:] respectively, they do *not* nasalize the preceding vowels in the my dialect, but rather behave as if the vowels in question were still immediately followed by /d/ or /b/.
can someone tell me something about the nasal vowels in American English?
Some accents (Great Lakes accents, NYC-Queens accent) are more nasalized than the others (WestCoast US)
Some accents (Great Lakes accents, NYC-Queens accent) are more nasalized than the others (WestCoast US)
There are no nasal vowels in standard English, or very very weak nasalization preceding nasal consonants, which isn't phonemic.
There are no nasal vowel *phonemes* in Standard English, but there are definitely dialects that one could lump in with Standard English which will have standalone nasal vowels which are not followed by nasal consonants. Both Josh's and my dialect can be largely considered to be "Standard English" (aside from some phonological weirdness n my dialect), and they both do not need realized nasal consonants to have realized nasal vowels.
There are no nasalised vowels in American English? But I have been hearing about American English to be the most nasalised accent.
''Portuguese is notorious for its strong nasality. In certain dialects it can actually be considered phonemic and a stricter phonological analysis of the language would identify at least 3 additional nasal vowel phonemes as demonstrated by the following minimal pairs:
lá - lã
pau - pão
pais - pães
The fact that Portuguese (as well as French and Polish, among the European languages) makes large use of the additional distinctive phonetic feature of nasalization reinforces the argument presented here. On the one hand, the nasality of Portuguese will represent a difficulty for foreign learners and cause an obvious foreign accent, and on the other hand, it does not help at all Brazilian learners of English. They will actually face two difficulties: suppressing nasality and still dealing with the large inventory of vowel phonemes of English, produced by only one distinctive feature - minimal differences of tongue position.''
Ricardo Schütz
http://www.sk.com.br/sk-voga.html
lá - lã
pau - pão
pais - pães
The fact that Portuguese (as well as French and Polish, among the European languages) makes large use of the additional distinctive phonetic feature of nasalization reinforces the argument presented here. On the one hand, the nasality of Portuguese will represent a difficulty for foreign learners and cause an obvious foreign accent, and on the other hand, it does not help at all Brazilian learners of English. They will actually face two difficulties: suppressing nasality and still dealing with the large inventory of vowel phonemes of English, produced by only one distinctive feature - minimal differences of tongue position.''
Ricardo Schütz
http://www.sk.com.br/sk-voga.html
"There are no nasalised vowels in American English? But I have been hearing about American English to be the most nasalised accent."
That's a stupid and incorrect stereotype and you obviously have no clue what you are talking about.
It seems everywhere you go the people always tend to think that people who speak "other dialects" have the more nasalised accent. If you ask a lot of Americans they would claim that the British have the most nasalised accent.
That's a stupid and incorrect stereotype and you obviously have no clue what you are talking about.
It seems everywhere you go the people always tend to think that people who speak "other dialects" have the more nasalised accent. If you ask a lot of Americans they would claim that the British have the most nasalised accent.
>>They will actually face two difficulties: suppressing nasality and still dealing with the large inventory of vowel phonemes of English, produced by only one distinctive feature - minimal differences of tongue position.<<
The matter is that nasality in English is allophonic rather than phonemic, unlike in Portuguese. However, English dialects in general still have nasalization, and realistic English pronunciation will have nasalization before nasal consonant phonemes. Of course, such nasalization may often be weak in many dialects, but it is still there. On the other hand, there are dialects with strong nasalization, such as mine and (I suspect) Josh's, which is generally associated with the elision of nasal consonants.
The matter is that nasality in English is allophonic rather than phonemic, unlike in Portuguese. However, English dialects in general still have nasalization, and realistic English pronunciation will have nasalization before nasal consonant phonemes. Of course, such nasalization may often be weak in many dialects, but it is still there. On the other hand, there are dialects with strong nasalization, such as mine and (I suspect) Josh's, which is generally associated with the elision of nasal consonants.
Did I say there were no nasalized vowels in American English? Read my post. I said in "Standard English". The fact that some native speakers have non-standard pronunciation does not mean that that pronunciation is worthy of imitation by foreign learners.
>>Did I say there were no nasalized vowels in American English? Read my post. I said in "Standard English". The fact that some native speakers have non-standard pronunciation does not mean that that pronunciation is worthy of imitation by foreign learners.<<
What I said is that English *as a whole* has allophonic vowel nasalization, not merely that just some English dialects have such. Pronouncing English without vowel nasalization, aside from some limited cases due to assimilation in some dialects, would almost certainly constitute a foreign accent on the part of the speaker in question.
What I said is that English *as a whole* has allophonic vowel nasalization, not merely that just some English dialects have such. Pronouncing English without vowel nasalization, aside from some limited cases due to assimilation in some dialects, would almost certainly constitute a foreign accent on the part of the speaker in question.
I said there is weak nasalization before nasal consonants. This is automatic in English. It would be difficult to pronounce such syllables with nasalization. But it is not phonemic. This is quite different from some English accents that have heavier nasalization giving a horrible-sounding twang effect. To speak good English, forget about nasalized vowels, and just say the vowels and consonants correctly, and any secondary articulations should take care of themselves.