Editing Nasalization (section)

{{Short description|Production of a sound while the velum is lowered}}
{{More citations needed|date=June 2010}}
{{Infobox IPA
| above      = Nasalized
| ipa symbol = ◌̃
| ipa number = 424
| decimal1   = 771
}}
{{Sound change}}
{{IPA notice}}
In [[phonetics]], '''nasalization''' (or '''nasalisation''' in [[British English]]) is the production of a sound while the [[soft palate|velum]] is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth.<ref>{{Cite web |title=nasal {{!}} speech sound |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/nasal-speech-sound |access-date=2022-07-23 |website=Britannica |language=en}}</ref> An archetypal nasal sound is {{IPA|[n]}}.

In the [[International Phonetic Alphabet]], nasalization is indicated by printing a [[tilde]] diacritic {{unichar|0303|COMBINING TILDE|html=|cwith=◌}} above the symbol for the sound to be nasalized: {{IPA|[ã]}} is the nasalized equivalent of {{IPA|[a]}}, and {{IPA|[ṽ]}} is the nasalized equivalent of {{IPA|[v]}}. A subscript diacritic {{IPA|[ą]}}, called an {{lang|pl|[[ogonek]]}} or {{lang|lt|nosinė}}, is sometimes seen, especially when the vowel bears [[tone (linguistics)|tone]] marks that would interfere with the superscript tilde. For example, {{IPA|[ą̄ ą́ ą̀ ą̂ ą̌]}} are more legible in most fonts than {{IPA|[ã̄ ã́ ã̀ ã̂ ã̌]}}.