Nasality

Nasality 

a shade of the voice and a distorted pronunciation of the sounds of speech caused by the peculiarities of the sound-forming stream of air as it passes through the nasal and oral cavities. There are open and closed forms of nasality.

Open nasality is observed in cases of defects of the hard palate and defects and paralysis of the soft palate when a significant part of the air passes into the nose during the pronunciation of the sounds of speech—the voice acquires a severe nasal shade, and speech becomes inarticulate. Closed nasality arises as a consequence of the difficult passage of air through the nose as a result of chronic cold, adenoids, or polypi in the nose; this especially disrupts the pronunciation of the nasal sounds [m] and [n]—they sound like [b] and [d], and the voice becomes muted. Sometimes nasality is caused not by an anatomical problem but by a habit of incorrectly pronouncing words, in particular as a result of deafness and consequent inability to aurally check the speech. Nasality can be eliminated by special logopedic exercises. If anatomical problems are present, preparatory treatment, sometimes surgery, is conducted.

L. V. NEIMAN