The retroflex nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spokenlanguages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɳ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is n`. Like all the retroflex consonants, the IPA symbol is formed by adding a rightward pointing hook extending from the bottom of the symbol used for the equivalent alveolar consonant, in this case the alveolar nasal which has the symbol n. The IPA symbol is thus a lowercase letter n with a rightward tail protruding from the bottom of the right stem of the letter. Compare n and ɳ. The symbol ɳ should not be confused with ɲ, the symbol for the palatal nasal, which has a leftward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of the left stem or with ŋ , the symbol for the velar nasal, which has a leftward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of the right stem.
Features of this consonant:
Its manner of articulation is plosive or stop, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract.
The tongue may be flat, with the blade of the tongue (the top surface of the tongue near the tip) touching the roof of the mouth, as in Polish cz, sz, ż and Mandarin ch, zh, sh, r.
Retroflexconsonants are common in the Indo-Aryan languages and the Dravidian languages; and can also be found in languages such as Mandarin Chinese, Javanese, Vietnamese, Swedish, Norwegian and some languages of Southern Italy and Sardinia.
Note: In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the symbols for retroflexconsonants are typically the same as for the alveolar consonants, but with the addition of a right-facing hook to the bottom of the symbol.
A nasal stop is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose.
Acoustically, nasal stops are sonorants, meaning they do not restrict the escape of air and cross-linguistically are nearly always voiced.
When a language is claimed to lack nasalconsonants altogether, as with several Niger-Congo languages, or the Pirahã language of the Amazon, nasal and non-nasal consonants usually alternate allophonically, and it is a theoretical claim on the part of the individual linguist that the nasal version is not the basic form of the consonant.
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