A voiced uvular nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a small capital version of the Latin letter n.
Uvular nasals are rare sounds cross-linguistically, occurring as a phoneme in only a small handful of languages. It is complex in terms of articulation, and also highly marked, as it is inherently difficult to produce a nasal articulation at the uvular point of contact. This difficulty can be said to account for the marked rarity of this sound among the world's languages. for example as an allophone of before a uvular plosive as in Quechua, or as an allophone of before another nasal consonant as in Selkup. However, it has been reported to exist as an independent phoneme in a small number of languages. Examples include the Klallam language, Tagalog language, the Tawellemmet and Ayr varieties of Tuareg Berber, the Rangakha dialect of Khams Tibetan, at least two dialects of the Bai language, the Papuan language Mapos Buang, In Mapos Buang and in the Bai dialects, it contrasts phonemically with a velar nasal. in some languages such as Yanyuwa, which is articulated slightly more front compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical uvular nasal, though not as front as the prototypical velar nasal. The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have a separate symbol for that sound, though it can be transcribed as (advanced ), or (both symbols denote a retracted ).
Features
upright=0.6|thumb|class=skin-invert-image|[[Sagittal section of a voiced uvular nasal]]
Features of a voiced uvular nasal:
Occurrence
{| class="wikitable"
!colspan=2| Language !! Word !! IPA!! Meaning !! Notes
|-
| Afrikaans || Many speakers || || || 'pleasant' || Allophone of before ; realized as in formal speech. See Afrikaans phonology
|-
| Arabic || Standard || / || || 'coup' || Allophone of before ; more commonly realized as .
|-
| colspan="2" | Armenian || / || || 'brainless' || Allophone of before a uvular consonant in informal speech.
|-
| rowspan="2" | Bai || Enqi dialect
|-
| colspan="2" | Georgian || / || || 'hip joint' || Allophone of before uvular consonants.
|-
| Iñupiaq || North Slope || || || 'he will study' || Corresponds to in other dialects.
|-
| colspan="2" | Inuvialuktun || || || 'to where?' || Allophonic; see Inuit phonology
|-
| colspan="2" | Kalaallisut || || || 'crawls' || Occurrence and phonemic status depend on the dialect.
|-
| colspan="2" | Kazakh || / / || || 'new' || Allophone of in back vowel contexts.
|-
| colspan="2" | Klallam || || || 'big tree' || Contrasts with a glottalized form, but not with .
|-
| colspan="2" | Lamo || || || 'five' || Contrasts with , , and .
|-
|colspan=2| Malto
|
|
| 'to tell'
| is phonetically . is in Southern and Western dialects. See Malto language#Phonology.
|-
| colspan="2" | Mapos Buang || || || 'widower' || Phonemic, and contrasts with .
|-
| colspan="2" | Mongolian || / / || || 'Mongolia' || Allophone of .
|-
| colspan="2" | Okinawan || || || 'grandmother' || Post-glottal allophone of .
|-
| Quechua || Peruvian || || || 'heart' || Allophone of .
|-
| colspan="2" | Spanish || || || 'shriveled' || Allophone of . See Spanish phonology
|-
| colspan="2" | Turkmen || || || 'bell' || Allophone of next to back vowels.
|-
| colspan="2" | Yanyuwa || || || 'adolescent boy' || Pre-uvular; contrasts with post-palatal .
|}
See also
- Index of phonetics articles