Nasalization (from Fr. nasal - nasal < Lat. Nasus - nose) - a change in sound , consisting in the acquisition by the sound of a nasal timbre and caused by the raising of the palatine curtain and the release of voice simultaneously through the mouth and nose . Sounds (vowels and consonants) in the position in front of the nasal can undergo nasalization in the tongue; with the further development of nasalization, such sounds can pass into the nasal; nasal consonants after nasal vowels of this origin are often lost. The same thing happened in the common Slavic language , the ancestor of Russian and other Slavic languages.
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Slavic languages
In the Slavic language , the ancestor of Russian and other Slavic languages, there were nasal vowels a, o and e. But during the course of linguistic evolution, all of them were lost in modern Slavic languages. Only the Polish language has preserved this archaism in the form of modern sounds ą (-ǫ) and ę, which have been simplified in Old Russian: * ęzykъ> ꙗзꙑкъ> language, * mǫžь> мѹжь> husband.
Romance Languages
Classical Latin did not have nasal vowels . However, during the divergent development of Romance languages, vowels were nasalized in languages with a strong Celtic substrate ( Portuguese and French ). Wed lat longus > fr. long / lɔ̃ / "long", but rum. lung without nasalization; lat germana > port. irmã but sp. hermana "sister" without nasalization. The nasalization in Romance languages in writing is indicated both positionally , for example, before the consonants -m (m) and -n (n) (in French and Portuguese), and diacritics - tilde in Portuguese: ã.
Indian Languages
- Anusvara
- Chandrabindu
Sources
- Nasalization of sounds - an article from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia .
- Gryaznova N.A. Nasalization // Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary / Ch. ed. V.N.Yartseva . - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1990 .-- 688 p. - 150,000 copies. - ISBN 5852700312 .