This is last post in the summer spelling series.
It sounds like it’s only for linguists but I’m also interested in evidence from non-linguists for teaching ‘nasalized a’. When I saw ‘nasalized a’ mentioned in a science of reading group on Facebook I thought it must have been a random and outlying post, but it turns out it’s actually a thing that people are teaching children and I can’t find any evidence in support of doing it.
🟣 Question: Could someone please provide a minimal pair where nasalised a and non-nasalised a (/æ̃/ and /æ/) are contrastive?
If you’re not sure what that means, read the explanation below. It contains information that can be found in any basic linguistics text book. (See photo for one example.)
Nasalisation of vowels is something we do naturally before /m/, /n/ and /ng/ and it is stronger in some accents than others. You bring nasalisation to words without needing to be taught and it does not change one phoneme into another.
Variation in place and manner of articulation (where in the mouth and how we make the sound) do create separate phonemes. The test is to find a minimal pair of words where only one sound is different, resulting in a word with a different meaning.
🟣 The minimal pair test.
If nazalisation creates a minimal pair then there is reason to mention it in the context of reading and spelling. If it doesn’t create a minimal pair, then there is no reason for its inclusion in a literacy program.
/bɪn/ /dɪn/ ✔️yes, a minimal pair
/b/ and /d/ in bin and din differ by the place of articulation and that difference creates two words with different meanings. (/b/ is a voiced bilabial plosive and /d/ is an voiced alveolar plosive.)
/bɪn/ /bʌn/ ✔️yes, a minimal pair
/ɪ/ and /ʌ/ in bin and bun differ only in their vowels which are more complex to describe than consonants. Basically, /ɪ/ is a high front vowel and /ʌ/ is a mid central vowel. The difference in place of articulation creates different words.
/bæt/ /bæ̃t/ ✖️not a minimal pair
These words are both ‘bat’, both pronounced with low front vowels. The first is said naturally without a nasalised vowel because of the following /t/ and the second is said with a nasalised vowel. The second will sound perhaps a bit ‘New York’ but it is still referring to a flying nocturnal creature.
/bæ̃n/ /bæn/ ✖️not a minimal pair
These words are both ‘ban’, both pronounced with low front vowels. The first has a naturally nasalised /a/ because it’s followed by a nasal consonant. The second has a non-nasalised vowel and you might sound a little more Canadian, but it’s still the word ‘can’.
To summarise – nasalisation is a feature of pronunciation that doesn’t change the meaning or spelling of a word so has no place in literacy instruction.
Speech to print cuts out so many unnecessary rules!