◄Previous: 3 Nasal (nasales)

# 3.1 Nasal assimilation

Nasals in pre-consonantal position, that is in syllable-coda (both within the word and across word-boundary), assimilate to the place of articulation of the following consonant.

- A nasal before a bilabial sound /p/ or /b/ is pronounced bilabial [m]; ambos (both), u[m] beso (a kiss). It’s worth pointing out that the orthographic sequence -nv- also represents phonetic [mb] as in convertir [kombeɾˈtiɾ], invitar [imbiˈtaɾ].
- Before labiodental f, the nasal becomes labiodental [ɱ] énfasis (emphasis).
- Before dentals, the nasal is pronounced dental [n̪], cantar (to sing). It sounds very similar to alveolar n, but the tip of the tongue touches the back of the front teeth, just like when pronouncing [t] or [d].
- Before palato-alveolars and palatals, the nasal is palatalised [nj]; ancho (wide), cónyuge (spouse). Note that it is not identical to the platal nasal ñ. (On the Sounds of Speechsite, this nasal is represented as [ň]).
- Before velars, we pronounce a velar nasal; [ŋ] – manga (sleeve), ángel (angel).

Preconsonantal nasal allophones. Source: Sounds of Speech https://soundsofspeech.uiowa.edu/main/spanish
◄Contents►Next: 4 Liquids (líquidas)

OpenLearn - Teaching Spanish pronunciation
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.