Nasal Vowel - Vowel Height and Nasalization

Vowel Height and Nasalization

Nasalization may cause a vowel's articulation to shift. However, while nasalization due to the assimilation of a nasal consonant will tend to cause a raising of the vowel's height, phonemically distinctive nasalization tends to lower the vowel. In most languages, vowels of all heights are nasalized indiscriminately, but preference occurs in select few languages, such as to high vowels in Chamorro and low vowels in Thai.

Read more about this topic:  Nasal Vowel

Famous quotes containing the words vowel and/or height:

    Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants.
    Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)

    We have not the motive to prepare ourselves for a “life-work” of teaching, of social work—we know that we would lay it down with hallelujah in the height of our success, to make a home for the right man. And all the time in the background of our consciousness rings the warning that perhaps the right man will never come. A great love is given to very few. Perhaps this make-shift time filler of a job is our life work after all.
    Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)