The voiceless palatal nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represent this sound are ⟨ɲ̊⟩ and ⟨ɲ̥⟩, which are combinations of the letter for the voiced palatal nasal and a diacritic indicating voicelessness. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J_0.
| Voiceless palatal nasal | |
|---|---|
| ɲ̊ | |
| ɲ̥ | |
| Audio sample | |
| Encoding | |
| X-SAMPA | J_0 |
If distinction is necessary, the voiceless alveolo-palatal nasal may be transcribed as ⟨n̠̊ʲ⟩ (devoiced, retracted and palatalized ⟨n⟩), or ⟨ɲ̟̊⟩ (devoiced and advanced ⟨ɲ⟩); these are essentially equivalent, since the contact includes both the blade and body (but not the tip) of the tongue. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are n_-'orn_-_j and J_0_+, respectively. A non-IPA letter ⟨ȵ̊⟩ (devoiced ⟨ȵ⟩, which is an ordinary "n", plus the curl found in the symbols for alveolo-palatal sibilant fricatives ⟨ɕ, ʑ⟩) can also be used.
Features of the voiceless palatal nasal:
| Language | Word | IPA | Meaning | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baniwa[1] | Hohodene | [ĩ:ɲ̊ə] | 'to eat' | ||
| Burmese[2] | ညှာ/nya: | [ɲ̊à] | 'considerate' | ||
| Faroese[3][4] | einki / onki | [ˈɔɲ̊t͡ʃɪ] | 'nothing' | See Faroese phonology | |
| Hmong | White Hmong | hnyav | [ɲ̊a˧˦] | 'heavy' | Contrasts with voiced /ɲ/. In Green Hmong, it has merged with /ɲ/.[5] |
| Iaai | [ɲ̊øːk] | 'to dedicate' | |||
| Icelandic[6] | banki | [ˈpäu̯ɲ̊cɪ] | 'bank' | See Icelandic phonology | |
| Jalapa Mazatec[7] | hñá | [ɲ̊á] | 'brush' | ||
| Xumi | Lower[8] | [ʃɐ̃˦ɲ̟̊ɛ˦] | 'clean' | Alveolo-palatal; occurs mostly in loanwords from Tibetan.[8] | |