Uvular nasal

The 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 ⟨ɴ⟩, a small capital version of the Latin letter n; the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is N\.

The uvular nasal is a rare sound crosslingually, presumably due to the relative difficulty involved in articulating this sound. The very small oral cavity used to produce uvular consonants makes it difficult to sustain voicing. It is also difficult to allow air to escape through the nose, as is required for a nasal consonant, while simultaneously blocking oral airflow as far back in the oral cavity as the uvular point of articulation.

The uvular nasal most commonly occurs as a conditioned allophone of other sounds in specific environments. For example, as an allophone of /n/ before a uvular plosive as in Quechua. However, it occurs as an independent phoneme in a small number of languages, notably Klallam and the Papuan language Mapos Buang. In Mapos Buang, the uvular nasal is phonemically distinct from three other phonemic dorsal nasals: a palatal nasal, a velar nasal, and a labialized velar nasal. This appears to be the only language known to contain a phonemic contrast between the uvular nasal and other dorsal nasals.

There is also the pre-uvular 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 ⟨ɴ̟⟩ (advanced ⟨ɴ⟩), ⟨ŋ̠⟩ or ⟨ŋ˗⟩ (both symbols denote a retracted ⟨ŋ⟩). The equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are N\_+ and N_-, respectively.