Nasal release

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In phonetics, a nasal release is the release of a plosive consonant into a nasal stop. Such sounds are transcribed in the IPA with superscript nasal letters, for example as [dⁿ]. In English words such as button, in which historically the tongue made separate contacts with the alveolar ridge for the /t/ and /n/ ([ˈbʌt^ən̩]), many speakers today make only one contact. That is, the /t/ is released directly into the /n/: [ˈbʌtⁿn̩]. While this is a minor phonetic detail in English (in fact, it is more commonly transcribed as having no audible release, [ˈbʌt ̚n̩]), nasal release is more important in some other languages.

[edit] Prestopped nasals

In some languages, such consonants may occur before vowels, and are called prestopped nasals.

Prestopped nasals, and prenasalized stops, occur when the oral cavity is closed, and the nasal cavity is opened by lowering the velum, but the timing of these two events does not coincide.

The Slavic languages are most famous for having prestopped nasals. This can be seen in place names such as the Dniester River. The Russian word for "day", for example, is inflected день, дня, дни, дней [d̻ʲen̻ʲ, d̻ʲn̻ʲa, d̻ʲn̻ʲi, d̻ʲn̻ʲej], "day, day's, days, days'". (Here the "palatalized" stops are presented as laminal postalveolars.)

Prestopped nasals also found in Australia. The Eastern Arrernte language has both prenasalized stops and prestopped nasals, but does not have word-initial consonant clusters. Compare [mwarə] "good", [mpwaɻə] "make", [pmwaɻə] "coolamon".

[edit] Final consonants with nasal release

However, some languages such as Vietnamese and Malay, which are generally described as having unreleased final stops, actually have a short nasal release in such cases. Since all final stops in these two languages are voiceless, the nasal release is voiceless as well.

Although the difference is commonly chalked up to aspiration, final nasal release is contrastive in Wolof:^[1]