Vowel Awareness | Oral Vowel Tuning | Consonants | Nasal Vowels | Phonetic Notation Key | Submission Page
The Nasal Vowels
Portuguese is most known for its abundance of nasal vowels. Because there are extremely few instances of vowel nasalization in English, mastering the nasal vowels is extremely challenging for English speakers. The first step of nasal vowel mastery is knowing what exactly a nasal vowel is:
What is a Nasal Vowel?
If you recall, a vowel sound is when you make a sound with a completely open vowel tract, with no air obstruction at any point (if their is air obstruction, then by definition its a consonant sound). For oral vowels like the those of English, 100% of that unobstructed air is leaving through your mouth.
What you probably don't realize, however, is that in order for you to make these sounds, you have to contract a muscle called the "velum". When you contract the velum upward, you temporarily block your nasal passage, so that ALL of the air coming up from your lungs is leaving your mouth.
The velum actually moves in two directions. If you contract the muscle downward, you completely block the oral passage so that ALL of the air coming up from your lungs is leaving through your nose. The result is a humming sound. Note: the humming sound is NOT the same thing as a nasal vowel.
What you probably don't realize, however, is that in order for you to make these sounds, you have to contract a muscle called the "velum". When you contract the velum upward, you temporarily block your nasal passage, so that ALL of the air coming up from your lungs is leaving your mouth.
The velum actually moves in two directions. If you contract the muscle downward, you completely block the oral passage so that ALL of the air coming up from your lungs is leaving through your nose. The result is a humming sound. Note: the humming sound is NOT the same thing as a nasal vowel.
A nasal vowel is when air passes through BOTH the mouth AND the nose.
To achieve this effect, your velum muscle has to be completely relaxed.
To achieve this effect, your velum muscle has to be completely relaxed.
The interactive vowel chart to the right is borrowed from The Phonetics & Phonology website of The University of Minas Gerais in Brazil. When you click a sound, the animated speech organ moves to illustrate what is happening in the mouth. If you click any of the oral vowel sounds reviewed in the last section (under "Orais") you will notice that the green flap will extend back to touch the back of the throat. This is the velum extending downwards to block the nasal passage. If you click any of the nasal vowels (under "Nasais"), however, you will notice that this green flap does not "move at all. As you can see, when the green flap is not moving (i.e. relaxed), the air can pass freely through BOTH the nasal AND oral passages. |
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Nasal Awareness & Control
It's not enough to know what a nasal vowel is; you have to be able to feel it. To help you feel it, the first set of drills in Nasal Bootcamp are for Nasal Awareness. Before moving onto the first lesson, you will need to go through these drills so that you are aware of what nasal vowels feel like in your speech organ.
To master the Flow of Portuguese, however, it's still not enough to simply be aware of the velar muscle; you have to control it. Actually, the main difficulty in Portuguese is not the nasal vowels themselves but rather the rapid alternation between nasal and oral vowels in normal speech. Alternating back and forth means repeatedly contracting and relaxing your velar muscle with speed and precision . This takes a degree of control that you currently do not possess as an English speaker.
To help you build this control as quickly as possible, I have created a series of Nasal Control Drills, which can also be found in the Nasal Bootcamp. If you practice these drills consistently, you can master the nasal vowel sounds in Portuguese in less than 1 week.
You will feel silly performing these drills, but if you practice them consistently, you will save yourself A LOT of trouble down the line when speaking Portuguese. The vast majority of Portuguese learners never learn these sounds, and thus speak with a very thick accent. So you can either sound silly to yourself for a week doing nasal drills privately in your room, or you can sound silly to Native Portuguese speakers forever when trying to converse with them.
To master the Flow of Portuguese, however, it's still not enough to simply be aware of the velar muscle; you have to control it. Actually, the main difficulty in Portuguese is not the nasal vowels themselves but rather the rapid alternation between nasal and oral vowels in normal speech. Alternating back and forth means repeatedly contracting and relaxing your velar muscle with speed and precision . This takes a degree of control that you currently do not possess as an English speaker.
To help you build this control as quickly as possible, I have created a series of Nasal Control Drills, which can also be found in the Nasal Bootcamp. If you practice these drills consistently, you can master the nasal vowel sounds in Portuguese in less than 1 week.
You will feel silly performing these drills, but if you practice them consistently, you will save yourself A LOT of trouble down the line when speaking Portuguese. The vast majority of Portuguese learners never learn these sounds, and thus speak with a very thick accent. So you can either sound silly to yourself for a week doing nasal drills privately in your room, or you can sound silly to Native Portuguese speakers forever when trying to converse with them.
The Nasal - Oral Vowel Pairs
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/ĩ/ - /i/
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In the audio files below, the speaker alternates between the nasal vowel and its oral equivalent (starting with the oral equivalent). Remember, the only physical movement in the speaker's mouth when alternating is in the relaxing/contracting of the velar muscle. So when you mimic these sounds, you should make sure that NOTHING is moving in your mouth (tongue, lips, etc.) when switching between a nasal sound and its oral equivalent.
/i/ - /ĩ/ |
/ɐ/ - /ɐ̃/ |
/o/ - /õ/ |
/u/ - /ũ/ |
When hearing these sounds, it might sound to you like there is an /n/ or /m/ somewhere. This is because /n/ and /m/ are the main nasal sounds in English, so your brain automatically thinks about them whenever you hear that nasal sound effect. Also for the record, you do actually create nasal vowels. For example, the /i/ sound in the word "going" is typically nasalized. And if that confuses you enough to exclaim "huh?" out loud to your self, then you would have created the nasal /ɐ̃/ sound.
Anyway, you will have plenty of time to master the nasal sounds in nasal bootcamp. For now, let's wrap up the sound primer with the a review of all the new phonetic symbols.
Anyway, you will have plenty of time to master the nasal sounds in nasal bootcamp. For now, let's wrap up the sound primer with the a review of all the new phonetic symbols.
Once you have finished this page, you may move on to the next section - Phonetic Notation Key.
Vowel Awareness | Oral Vowel Tuning | Consonants | Nasal Vowels | Phonetic Notation Key | Submission Page