[n]→[ɾ]Certainty: 4/5Commonality: 2/5

Alveolar nasal to Voiced alveolar flap

The transformation from an alveolar nasal to an alveolar flap is a type of liquidization or rhotacism, where a nasal consonant loses its nasal airflow and becomes a rhotic liquid, typically as an allophonic variation in specific phonetic environments.

Phonetic Effects

Liquidization, Denasalization, Rhotacism

Language Examples

Japanese Japonic

n [before ɾ]→ɾ̃/ɾ— In rapid speech, the alveolar nasal can assimilate into a following rhotic, becoming a nasalized flap or a standard flap.

North American English Germanic

nt [winter]→ɾ̃ [winner]— Nasal flapping where the nasal-stop cluster reduces to a nasalized alveolar flap, which is functionally equivalent to the rhotic flap in terms of duration.

Related Transformations

Lambdacism Nasalization

More Germanic Shifts

[a] → [ã] — Assimilatory Nasalization [a] → [∅] — Elision [a] → [ʔ] — Glottalization [a] → [ə] — Vowel Reduction [æ] → [ɛ] — Vowel Raising

Sources & References

Spotted a mistake or have a better example?

EchoDrift is community-driven. You can suggest a change directly through GitHub.

Propose an Edit on GitHub