Prenasalized stops are phonetic sequences of nasal plus plosive that behave phonologically like single consonant. That is, like affricates, the reasons for considering these sequences to be single consonants is in their behavior, not in their actual composition. Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... Phonology (Greek phonÄ“ = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ... An affricate is a consonant that begins like a stop (most often an alveovelar, such as [t] or [d]) and that doesnt have a release of its own, but opens directly into a fricative (or, in one language, into a trill). ...

The Bantu languages are famous for their prenasalized stops, but similar sounds occur across Africa and around the world. Ghana's independence hero Kwame Nkrumah had a prenasalized stop in his name, as does the capital of Chad, N'Djamena. (African prenasalized stops are often hyphenated in European transcription.) Map showing the approximate distribution of Bantu (dull yellow) vs. ... Kwame Nkrumah (September 21, 1909 – April 27, 1972) was an African anti-colonial leader, founder and first president of the modern Ghanaian state and one of the most influential Pan-Africanists of the 20th century. ... NDjamena, «ehn JAHM uh nuh», population 721,000 (2005), is the capital of Chad. ...

An example of the unitary behavior of prenasalized stops is provided by Fijian. In this language, as in many in Melanesia, there is a series of voiceless stops, [p, t, k], and a series of prenasalized stops, [mb, nd, ŋɡ], but there are no simple voiced stops, [b, d, ɡ]. In addition, Fijian allows prenasalized stops at the beginning of a word, but it does not allow other consonant sequences. Thus the prenasalized stops behave like ordinary consonants. Melanesia (from Greek black islands) is a region extending from the western side of East Pacific to the Arafura Sea, north and north-east of Australia. ... In phonetics, a voiceless consonant is a consonant that does not have voicing. ... A voiced consonant is a sound made as the vocal cords vibrate, as opposed to a voiceless consonant, where the vocal cords are relaxed. ...

When Tok Pisin is spoken by people in Papua New Guinea who have similar phonologies in their languages, voiced cononants are prenasalized. For example, the preposition bilong (from English belong) is pronounced [mbiloŋ] by many Melanesians. The prenasalization behaves as a phonetic detail of voicing, rather than a separate segment. Tok Pisin (tok means word or speech, pisin means pidgin) is the creole spoken in Papua New Guinea (PNG). ...

In dialects of northern Japan, standard voiced stops are prenasalized, and voiceless stops are voiced. For example, /itigo/ "strawberry" is [itɕigo] in most of the south, but [izɨŋɡo] in much of the north.

Prenasalized stops are also found in Australia. The Eastern Arrernte language has both prenasalized stops and prestopped nasals, but does not have any other word-initial consonant clusters. Compare [mwarə] "good", [mpwaɻə] "make", [pmwaɻə] "coolamon". In phonetics, a nasal release is the release of a plosive consonant into a nasal stop. ... In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. ...