Africa The
Bantu languages are famous for their prenasalized stops (the "nt" in "Bantu" is an example; see also
North Teke), but similar sounds occur across Africa.
Ghana's politician
Kwame Nkrumah had a prenasalized stop in his name, as does the capital of
Chad,
N'Djamena (African prenasalized stops are often written with
apostrophes in Latin script transcription although this may sometimes indicate
syllabic nasals instead). The sound can also be found in approximately 90 languages in Africa.
East Asia In
Southern Min languages, such as
Teochew, prenasalized stops are also found. The prenasalized stops in the vernacular readings of Southern Min languages evolved not from the different
Middle Chinese initials and thus are historically different from the voiced obstruents found in
Wu and
Xiang languages. Prenasalized consonants are widely utilized in the
Loloish languages of the
Lolo–Burmese family, such as
Yi and
Naxi. The following table illustrates the prenasalized consonants in northern Yi. The prenasalized stops also occur in several branches of the
Hmong–Mien language family of Southern China and Southeast Asia. In dialects of northern
Japan, standard voiced stops are prenasalized, and voiceless stops are voiced. For example, "strawberry" is in most of the south, but in much of the north. Prenasalized stops are also reconstructed for
Old Japanese.
Europe In
Greek and
Tsakonian the orthographic sequences μπ, ντ γκ and γγ are often pronounced as prenasalized voiced stops , , and , respectively, especially in formal speech and among older speakers. Among younger Athenian speakers the prenasalization often disappears and in fast speech the voiced stop may be replaced by a fricative.
South America The
Guarani language has a set of prenasalized stops which are alternate allophonically with simple nasal continuants; they appear within or at the beginning of a word, to the left of a stressed vowel that is oral.
South Asia The
Indo-Aryan languages Sinhala and
Dhivehi have prenasalized stops.
Sinhala script has prenasalized versions of , , , and . Sinhala is one of only three languages reported to have a
contrast between prenasalized consonants and their corresponding clusters, along with
Fula and
Selayarese, although the nature of this contrast is debated. For example, } || kada || shoulder pole
Sri Lankan Malay has been in contact with Sinhala a long time and has also developed prenasalized stops. The spectrograms on the right show the word
gambar with a prenasalized stop and the word
sambal with a sequence of nasal+voiced stop, yet not prenasalized. The difference in the length of the [m] part is clearly visible. The nasal in the prenasalized word is much shorter than the nasal in the other word. This phonetic information is complemented by phonological evidence: The first vowel in gaambar is lengthened, which only happens in open syllables in Sri Lanka Malay. The
syllabification of gambar must be ga.mbar then, and the syllabification of sambal sam.bal.
Oceania An example of the unitary behavior of prenasalized stops is provided by
Fijian. In this language, as in many in
Melanesia and also reconstructed for
Proto-Oceanic, there is a series of
voiceless stops, , and a series of prenasalized stops, , but there are no simple
voiced stops, . In addition, Fijian allows prenasalized stops at the beginning of a word, but it does not allow other consonant sequences. Thus the prenasalized stops behave like ordinary consonants. In some
Oceanic languages, prenasalisation of voiced consonants depends on the environment. For example, in
Raga, b and d are prenasalized when the preceding consonant is nasal (
nonda "ours"), but not elsewhere (
gida "us").
Uneapa has prenasalization word-medially, but not word-initially (
gombu "yam"). When
Tok Pisin is spoken by people in
Papua New Guinea who have similar phonologies in their languages, voiced consonants are prenasalized. For example, the preposition
bilong (from English
belong) is pronounced by many
Melanesians. The prenasalization behaves as a phonetic detail of voicing, rather than a separate segment.
Australia Prenasalized stops are also found in Australia. The
Eastern Arrernte language has both prenasalized stops and
prestopped nasals, but does not have any other word-initial
consonant clusters. Compare "good", "make", "
coolamon". == See also ==