Voiceless alveolar nasal

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Voiceless alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) that represents this sound is ⟨n̥⟩, a combination of the letter for the voiced alveolar nasal (⟨n⟩) with a diacritic indicating voicelessness (a small circle underneath the letter).

Characteristics

The voiceless alveolar nasal is characterized by:

• Its manner of articulation being nasal, which means air is allowed to escape through the nose, either exclusively (nasal stops) or in addition to through the mouth.
• Its place of articulation being alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge, which is situated just behind the upper front teeth.
• Its phonation being voiceless, which means the vocal cords do not vibrate during the articulation of the sound.
• It is a nasal consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the nose.

Occurrence

The voiceless alveolar nasal is a rare sound across languages and may occur as a phonemic sound or an allophone of other nasal consonants under certain conditions, particularly in languages that have a distinction between voiced and voiceless nasals.

Examples

Language	Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Icelandic	hundur	[ˈhʏn̥tʏr]	'dog'	Realized as voiceless; contrasts with its voiced counterpart.
Welsh	cenhinen	[ˈkɛn̥ɪnɛn]	'leek'	Occurs in initial position; contrasts with its voiced counterpart.

See also

• Voiceless nasal
• Alveolar consonant
• Nasal consonant
• International Phonetic Alphabet