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Are English diphthongs nasalized before nasals?

English Language & Usage Asked on April 8, 2021

I learned that vowels are often nasalized before nasals (Nasalization). It means that the velum is lowered when the vowel is produced in the mouth and most of the air comes out through nose. For example, the [a] in the word "man" is nasalized because it comes before the nasal [n]. We mark nasalization by a tilde over the nasalized vowel.

"Man" = [mãn]

I didn’t find any information about diphthongs nasalization and I wonder if they are nasalized before nasals.

For example, the diphthong [aɪ] comes before a nasal in the word "mine". Is it nasalized? If it is, how should I represent it?

[mãɪ̃n] or [maɪ̃n]?

Which vowel between the two vowels of a diphthong is nasalized? And where should the tilde go?

There are some disagreements in the comments. I believe most people here confused my question with "spelling", which is not my concern. This is IPA transcription, not spelling. French has nasalized vowels in "spelling" so that’s completely different.

One Answer

For the question as to how to represent nasalized diphthongs in IPA, Portuguese offers the answer. This Wikipedia article says:

Portuguese also allows nasal diphthongs that contrast with their oral counterparts, like the pair mau /ˈmaw/ "bad" and mão /ˈmɐ̃w̃/ "hand".

So in Portuguese, you put the nasalization diacritic on both elements of the diphthong.

In comments, Araucaria pointed out that a tilde over both elements of the diphthong: [a͠ɪ], would be better notation for a nasalized [aɪ] in IPA. However, this doesn't seem to be the standard ... possibly because of typogrphical considerations when IPA for Portuguese was first introduced, although it's not hard to do using Unicode today. And if you want an extremely narrow transcription, you might want to let your choice of symbols depend on how far into the diphthong the nasalization starts.

Answered by Peter Shor on April 8, 2021

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