verb
- to add a nasal sound or quality before (a vowel or consonant) in speech or phonetic transcription
Usage: linguistics; phonetics
Examples
- In some dialects, speakers prenasalize vowels before nasal consonants.
- The phonologist noted that the language prenasalizes certain stops in specific contexts.
- When you prenasalize a vowel, you add a nasal quality to its articulation.
- The transcription shows that the speaker prenasalizes the initial consonant in that word.