Voiceless palatal nasal

Voiceless palatal nasal
ɲ̊
ɲ̥

The voiceless palatal nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɲ̥⟩, a combination of the letter for the voiced palatal nasal and a diacritic indicating voicelessness. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J_0.

Features

Features of the voiceless palatal nasal:

• Its manner of articulation is occlusive, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract. Because the consonant is also nasal, the blocked airflow is redirected through the nose.
• Its place of articulation is palatal, which means it is articulated with the middle or back part of the tongue raised to the hard palate.
• Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.
• It is a nasal consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the nose, either exclusively (nasal stops) or in addition to through the mouth.
• Because the sound is not produced with airflow over the tongue, the central–lateral dichotomy does not apply.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Burmese		ညှာ	[ɲ̊à]	'considerate'
Faroese		einki/onki	[ɔɲ̊t͡ʃɪ]	'nothing'
Jalapa Mazatec		[ɲ̊á]		'brush'
Xumi	Lower	[EPʃɐ̃ɲ̟̊ɛ]		'clean'	Alveolo-palatal; occurs mostly in loanwords from Tibetan.

See also

• Index of phonetics articles