Nasal vowel in the context of "Polabian language"

Katakana (片仮名, カタカナ; IPA: [katakaꜜna, kataꜜkana]) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji).

The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived from components or fragments of more complex kanji. Katakana and hiragana are both kana systems. With one or two minor exceptions, each syllable (strictly mora) in the Japanese language is represented by one character or kana in each system. Each kana represents either a vowel such as "a" (katakana ア); a consonant followed by a vowel such as "ka" (katakana カ); or "n" (katakana ン), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds like English m, n or ng ([ŋ]) or like the nasal vowels of Portuguese or Galician.

Igbo (English: /ˈiːboʊ/ EE-boh, US also /ˈɪɡboʊ/ IG-boh; Standard Igbo: Ásụ̀sụ́ Ìgbò [ásʊ̀sʊ̀ ìɡ͡bò] ) is the principal native language cluster of the Igbo people, an ethnicity in the Southeastern part of Nigeria.

Igbo languages are spoken by a total of 31 million people. The number of Igboid languages depends on how one classifies a language versus a dialect, so there could be around 35 different Igbo languages. The core Igbo cluster, or Igbo proper, is generally thought to be one language but there is limited mutual intelligibility between the different groupings (north, west, south and east). A standard literary language termed 'Igbo izugbe' (meaning "general igbo") was generically developed and later adopted around 1972, with its core foundation based on the Orlu (Isu dialects), Anambra (Awka dialects) and Umuahia (Ohuhu dialects), omitting the nasalization and aspiration of those varieties.

In historical linguistics, transphonologisation (also known as rephonologisation or cheshirisation, see below) is a type of sound change whereby a phonemic contrast that used to involve a certain feature X evolves in such a way that the contrast is preserved, yet becomes associated with a different feature Y.

For example, a language contrasting two words */sat/ vs. */san/ may evolve historically so that final consonants are dropped, yet the modern language preserves the contrast through the nature of the vowel, as in a pair /sa/ vs. /sã/. Such a situation would be described by saying that a former contrast between oral and nasal consonants has been transphonologised into a contrast between oral and nasal vowels.

Little yus (Ѧ) and big yus (Ѫ), or jus, are two letters of the Cyrillic script representing two Common Slavonic nasal vowels in the early Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets. Each can occur in iotated form (Ѩ, Ѭ), formed as ligatures with the decimal i (І). Other yus letters are closed little yus (Ꙙ), iotated closed little yus (Ꙝ) and blended yus (Ꙛ).

Phonetically, little yus represents a nasalized front vowel, possibly [ɛ̃] (like the French ‘in’ in “cinq” or Polish 'ę' in “kęs”), while big yus represents a nasalized back vowel, such as IPA [ɔ̃] (like the French ‘on’ in “bombon” or Polish 'ą' in “kąt”). This is also suggested by the appearance of each as a 'stacked' digraph of 'Am' and 'Om' respectively.