Nasal consonant
A nasal is a sound produced when the air is allowed to escape through the nose, while its oral passage may be blocked by the lips or tongue (a nasal stop) or opened (a nasal vowel). Nasal stops are often called simply "nasals".
Here are some nasal consonants:
English, German and Cantonese have [m], [n] and [ŋ]
French has [m], [n] and [ɲ], as well as [ŋ] in a few recent loanwords (such as le parking).
Catalan and Italian have [m], [n], [ɲ] as phonemes, and [ŋ] as an allophone.
Spanish has [m], [n], [ɲ] as phonemes, and [ɱ] and [ŋ] as allophones.
Mohawk has only one nasal phoneme /n/, and Rotokas, a language of Papua New Guinea, has none (although nasals do show up allophonically in that language).
French, Portuguese, and Polish have nasal vowels. In IPA, nasal vowels are indicated by placing a tilde (~) over the vowel in question. So French sang = /sã/.
See also
