Prenasalized consonant

Common card · No. 402833

Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent (or occasionally a non-nasal sonorant) that behave phonologically like single consonants. When unambiguous, prenasalized consonants may simply be transcribed e.g. ⟨mb⟩. In the IPA, a tie bar may be used to specify that these are single segments, as in ⟨m͡b⟩ or ⟨m͜b⟩. The tie bar is commonly omitted. Another common transcription practice is to make the nasal superscript: ⟨ᵐb⟩, especially when it is phonetically distinct from a nasal-stop sequence. An old convention of the IPA was to mark the nasal as 'short' until the short and the nonsyllabic signs diverged, as in ⟨m̆b⟩. The primary reason for considering these to be single consonants, rather than clusters as in English finger or member, lies in their behavior; however, there may also be phonetic correlates which distinguish prenasalized consonants from clusters. Because of the additional difficulty in both articulation and timing, prenasalized fricatives and sonorants...

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