In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that air escapes partially or wholly through the nose during the production of the sound.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet nasalization is indicated by printing a tilde above the symbol for the sound to be nasalized: is the nasaslized equivalent of [a], and [ṽ] is the nasalized equivalent of [v].

See also

• nasal consonant
• nasal vowel