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A nasal vowel is a vowel that produced with a lowering of the
velum so that air escapes both through the
mouth and the nose. In many languages, vowels that
are adjacent to nasal consonants are produced partially or fully with
a lowered velum. In English, vowels preceding nasal consonants are
nasalized, but there is no phonemic distinction between nasal and oral vowels. In French, nasal vowels are phonemic, as words can differ only in whether a
vowel is nasalized or not. For example, the words sait (="knows") and saint (="saint") are pronounced the same,
except the vowel in saint is a nasal vowel and the vowel in sait is not.
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