I am working with a native Tibetan speaker to translate some words from Tibetan into English, and I noticed they were marking the pronunciation of certain consonants with a nasal marker.
They marked it on the consonant though, for example:
Form | Transcription | Word Class | Meaning |
---|---|---|---|
གཏམ | tam̃ | noun | conversation |
གཏལ | ʈal̃ | (meaningless syllable by itself) | |
གནག | nag̃ | noun | cattle |
གནང | naŋ̃ | verb | give |
གནན | neñ | verb | press |
གནམ | nam̃ | noun | sky |
གནུབས | nub̃ | ||
གཡབས | yab̃ | verb | to have sex (past participle) |
གཡར | yar̃ | verb | to lend (r = trilled or flapped r) |
These are just a few.
They created a recording here of nasalised and non-nasalised /n/, for the meaningless syllable བསྙོན་ nyoñ vs ཉོན་ nyon ‘listen (command)’.
Is this actually on the /o/ sound (for nyon), that is, are these "nasalities" actually on the preceding vowel? Or are they actually on the consonant? How should they be represented? Wikipedia says nasalized consonants are rare, and then this is /n m ŋ/, which are already nasalized! Can you have a nasalized nasal? Or should we be saying the nasalness is on the preceding vowel?
It seems maybe because of Tibetan orthography this translator might be imagining the nasalness is on the consonant (when it is really on the vowel)? They marked the consonant as having nasalness without any prompting from me, so I'm not sure if that's what they meant or if it's a tradition/orthography sort of thing.
I will note that in some cases, they did mark the vowel with nasalness, when it didn't have a trailing consonant (we have only covered single syllables so far):
Form | Transcription | Word Class | Meaning |
---|---|---|---|
བསླད | lẽ | verb | deceive |
མངའ | ŋã | verb | possess |