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In most languages, vowels that are adjacent to distinction between nasal and oral vowels (and all vowels are considered phonemically oral). However, the word "huh" is generally pronounced with a nasal vowel. In French , by contrast, nasal vowels are phonemes distinct from oral vowels, since words exist which differ mainly in the nasal or oral quality of a vowel. For example, the words ''beau'' "beautiful" and ''bon'' "good" are pronounced virtually the same (the vowel in ''bon'' is slightly more open, leading many dictionaries to transcribe it ), except that the former is oral and the latter is nasal. SUPRASEGMENTAL AND TRANSITIONAL NASAL VOWELS In Min Chinese, nasal vowels carry persistent air flow though both the Mouth and the Nose , producing an invariant and sustainable vowel quality. That is, this type of nasalization is synchronic and Suprasegmental to the voicing. In contrast, nasal vowels in French or Portuguese are transitional, where the Velum ends up constricting the Mouth airway. In languages which have transitional nasal vowels, it is commonly the case that there are fewer nasal vowels than oral ones. This appears to be due to a loss of distinctivity caused by the nasal articulation. ORTHOGRAPHY Languages which are written in the Latin Alphabet may indicate nasal vowels by a following ''n'' or ''m'', as is the case in French, Portuguese, or Yoruba ; others use Diacritic al symbols (Portuguese also employs a Tilde ''~'' on ''ã, õ'', before vowels; Polish and Navajo use a hook underneath the letter, called an Ogonek , as in ''ą, ę''). In the International Phonetic Alphabet , nasal vowels are denoted by a tilde over the symbol for the vowel, as in Portuguese. Abugida scripts, which are used for most Indian Languages , use the ''bindu'' (.) symbol and its variations to denote nasal vowels and nasal junctions between consonants. The Nastalique script used by Urdu denotes nasalisation by employing the Arabic letter "noon" but removing the dot. It is called a noon-ghunna or nasalized N. Nasalized vowels occur in classical Arabic , but not in contemporary speech or standardized Arabic . There is no orthographic way to denote the nasalization, but it is systematically taught as part of the essential rules of Tajweed employed while reading the Quran . Nasalization usually occurs in recitation when a final N (noon) is followed by a Y (ya) EXAMPLE LANGUAGES Languages which use phonemic nasal vowels include, among others:
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