Palatal nasal

Joe Tun (aka) U Kyaw Tun   Mon Mar 17, 2008 4:05 pm GMT
Palatal nasal in English
I have been trying to find English words, including borrowed words, that have the palatal nasal sound. The only example I could find is given by Wikipedia <onion> [ˈʌɲən] -- Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatal_nasal 080317. However, DJPD16-380 gives /'ʌn.jən/.
Joe Tun (aka) U Kyaw Tun, 080317
Tun Inst. of Learning
www.tuninst.net
Travis   Mon Mar 17, 2008 4:08 pm GMT
The matter is that English has no /ɲ/ phoneme, but the sound [ɲ] can show up in some dialects as a result of the cluster /nj/, which does definitely show up in English as a whole.
Lazar   Mon Mar 17, 2008 8:03 pm GMT
For my part, I don't think I have [ɲ] as a native sound. I have:

onion [ˈʌ.njən]
canyon [ˈkʰæ.njən]
senior [ˈsi:.njɚ]
junior [ˈdʒu:.njɚ]

I really don't think my tongue goes back to a palatal position in those. Note, though, that I disagree with the example syllabification that you found: I definitely perceive the [nj] as being together as an unstressed syllable onset. (m-w.com also syllabifies them this way.)
Travis   Tue Mar 18, 2008 2:37 am GMT
Yeah, I do not have [ɲ] as a native sound either; I do have [nʲ] as a native sound, but this is actually a very different sound from [ɲ], and is not from /nj/ clusters but rather due to /n/ being followed by /u/, /ʊ/, /w/, or /ər/ or being in a cluster with another palatalized consonant.