noun
- In phonetics and linguistics, the quality or characteristic of being nasal; the production of speech sounds with air flowing through the nose.
Usage: technical; linguistics
Examples
- The nasalism in French nasal vowels distinguishes them from oral vowels.
- Linguists study nasalism to understand how different languages use nasal resonance.
- The degree of nasalism varies across dialects and individual speakers.
- Nasalism is a key feature in the phonology of many languages worldwide.