nasalization
Noun
Meaning
The act of nasalizing, or the state of being nasalized.
Source: Webster's dictionarySynonyms
Hypernyms
Examples
Since nasal vowels are phonemic, it simplifies the picture somewhat to assume that nasalization in occlusives is allophonic.
The tilde is used to indicate nasalization, such as in ã /ɐ/ and õ /õ/.
However, it is possible that in reality, final /u/ comes from long *-ū < -um, where original final -m caused vowel lengthening as well as nasalization.
Length In Lithuanian, the nosinė (literally, "nasal") mark originally indicated vowel nasalization but about the end of the 17th century nasal vowels gradually evolved into corresponding long non-nasal vowels in most dialects.
This appears to represent a transitional stage before nasalization, and occurs especially in the southerly dialects other than Gascon (which still maintains different final nasals, as in Catalan).
This nasal vowel lost its nasalization in the Romance languages except in monosyllables, where it became /n/ (cf.