so that answers that: m, n, and ng are the only three nasal sounds in English.
I have what I think to be allergies, which were acting up a little while ago. I had a stuffy nose frequently. One thing I noticed was that I could make my nose ‘pop’ by saying the T sound (‘tuh’ like ‘touch me!’ really loudly, not that I’d say that too much)- making this sound would make my nose make a popping noise (quiet one), and eventually, enough pops cause the mucus to drain down the back of my throat. Hey, I said TMI :D.
‘Tuh’ wasn’t the only sound that worked- other sounds, which I suspect have a sort of oomph to them, causing vibrations around the mouth/nose region- also worked, but not nearly as often or as well. ‘Ruh’ ‘Cuh’ ‘Muh’ "Duh’- I would suspect that D, T, C, and others followed by ‘uh’ are the oomph as I said, but why did Ruh work? Not very oomph-ish- it more rolls out of the mouth than explodes like the other sounds.
Anyways, I guess I’m asking if there’s any scientific reason anyone can give- and please, only if you know what you’re talking about (no offense, but conjecture isn’t worth much and it makes some people avoid this site b/c of it)- or, if anyone else experiences this, or if they’d like to try next time they have a stuffy nose.
I’f you’re gonna try it, start out by just making the ‘tuh’ motion with your mouth rather than saying it- silently. Then, get louder by small degrees until you hear something pop in your nose. The pop is somewhat quiet- but you can feel it too- and not easy to hear if you start out screaming ‘TUH!’
I’m no expert on phonetics and stuff, but as a singer, I’ve always been taught to imagine the entire body (chest cavity, throat, back of the neck, inside the head, including right behind the nose) is open so that sound can resonate. If you stretch out a guitar string in the air, and play it, it won’t be heard very well, but if you play it next to the big open part of the guitar, the sound resonates inside that empty space, so it’s louder and richer. Same thing with the voice, you want to let the sound reverbrate within your entire body, not just the throat.
Anyway, here’s my point: Singers are taught to do this pretty much all the time, not just for the n, m, and ng sounds. Which leads me to believe that all sounds are somewhat nasal, and n, m, and ng, are simply more nasal than the others. Which would explain why t, d, and several others are causing a certain amount of vibration in the nasal passage for you.
When you make a nasal sound, you open some little doodad between the nose and mouth (I forget what it’s called - can you tell that phonetics isn’t my strong point?) That’s why when you have a bad cold, nasals are impossible and end up as /bdg/ instead of /mnN/ (using SAMPA; /N/ means “ng”). Obviously they’re not in isolation from one another, but it’s the egress of air through the nose and its properties as a resonant chamber that distinguish /bdg/ from /mnN/.
I wonder if the “tuh” thing is because when you make a stop sound like a /t/ or /k/, there’s a slight increase in pressure in your mouth. If you had a nose so stuffed that you weren’t able to make nasal sounds, you’d end up putting some pressure on the snot in your nose, though it seems like it’d be way less than you’d get by blowing your nose.
The “t” sound is classifed as a voiceless alveolar stop. This means your tounge touching the back of your teeth cuts off the flow of air. It does not require the nose to make the sound.
However, it’s possible that stopping the flow of air causes some sort of reverberation as a side effect. Do you have the same problem with “d”?
And to answer your question: Tuh’ wasn’t the only sound that worked- other sounds, which I suspect have a sort of oomph to them, causing vibrations around the mouth/nose region- also worked, but not nearly as often or as well. ‘Ruh’ ‘Cuh’ ‘Muh’ "Duh’- I would suspect that D, T, C, and others followed by ‘uh’ are the oomph as I said, but why did Ruh work? Not very oomph-ish- it more rolls out of the mouth than explodes like the other sounds.
