Hi again and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English pronunciation podcast.

My name is Mandy and this is our 135th episode.

Today's show is about nasal sounds.

Nasal sounds are those sounds that you surprisingly need to use your nose to create.

To show you what I mean, let's do a quick little experiment with the three nasal sounds of English,

the M sound, N sound, and NG sound.

We'll start with the M sound because it's the easiest. To create the M sound, the lips must be closed.

M.

Now I want you to create that sound while holding your nose shut with your fingers.

You can't really just imagine this action in your head.

You have to actually do it.

So hold your nose shut and say the M sound.

Could you do it?

If you could, you aren't creating the M sound correctly.

This is because the air must pass out through our nose for all three nasal sounds.

Let's try the N sound next.

To create the N sound, my tongue is pressed against the middle of my tooth ridge.

My tooth ridge is that bump right behind my top front teeth. I completely block the air from pushing

past my tongue and so the air must come out my nose.

Mm.

Again, you cannot create that sound if your nose is plugged.

The N sound can really be a troublesome sound for native speakers of Cantonese and Japanese,

...