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Concept
Nasal release
Summary
In phonetics, a nasal release is the release of a stop consonant into a nasal. Such sounds are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet with superscript nasal letters, for example as [tn] in English catnip [ˈkætnnɪp]. In English words such as sudden in which historically the tongue made separate contacts with the alveolar ridge for the /d/ and /n/, [ˈsʌdən], many speakers today make only one contact. That is, the /d/ is released directly into the /n/: [ˈsʌdnn̩]. Although this is a minor phonetic detail in English (in fact, it is commonly transcribed as having no audible release: [ˈkæt̚nɪp], [ˈsʌd̚n̩]), nasal release is more important in some other languages.
In some languages, such consonants may occur before vowels and are called prestopped nasals.
Prestopped nasals and prenasalized stops occur when the oral cavity is closed and the nasal cavity is opened by lowering the velum, but the timing of both events does not coincide. A prenasalized stop starts out with a lowered velum that raises during the occlusion, much like the [nd] in candy. A postnasalized stop or prestopped nasal begins with a raised velum that lowers during the occlusion. That causes an audible nasal release, as in English sudden.
The Slavic languages are most famous for having (non-phonemic) prestopped nasals. That can be seen in place names such as the Dniester River. The Russian word for "day", for example, is inflected день, дня, дни, дней [djenj, dnjä, dnji, dnjej], "day, day's, days, days'".
Prestopped nasals area also found in Australia. Eastern Arrernte has both prenasalized stops and prestopped nasals, but it does not have word-initial consonant clusters. Compare [mwaɻə] "good" (with nasal stop), [mbwaɻə] "make" (with prenasalized stop), [pmwaɻə] "coolamon" (with prestopped nasal).
There is little or no phonetic difference between a "prenasalized stop" (/nd/) and a cluster (/nd/). It is similar for prestopped nasals. The difference is essentially one of phonological analysis.
Official source
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