- published: 28 Aug 2012
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The alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in numerous spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar nasals is ⟨n⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is n.
The vast majority of languages have either an alveolar or dental nasal. There are a few languages that lack either sound but have [m] (e.g., colloquial Samoan). There are some languages (e.g., Rotokas) that lack both [m] and [n].
Features of the alveolar nasal: