[Footnote 14:  As at the end of the snappily pronounced no! (sometimes written nope!) or in the over-carefully pronounced at all, where one may hear a slight check between the t and the a.]

[Footnote 15:  “Singing” is here used in a wide sense.  One cannot sing continuously on such a sound as b or d, but one may easily outline a tune on a series of b’s or d’s in the manner of the plucked “pizzicato” on stringed instruments.  A series of tones executed on continuant consonants, like m, z, or l, gives the effect of humming, droning, or buzzing.  The sound of “humming,” indeed, is nothing but a continuous voiced nasal, held on one pitch or varying in pitch, as desired.]

[Footnote 16:  The whisper of ordinary speech is a combination of unvoiced sounds and “whispered” sounds, as the term is understood in phonetics.]

The nose is not an active organ of speech, but it is highly important as a resonance chamber.  It may be disconnected from the mouth, which is the other great resonance chamber, by the lifting of the movable part of the soft palate so as to shut off the passage of the breath into the nasal cavity; or, if the soft palate is allowed to hang down freely and unobstructively, so that the breath passes into both the nose and the mouth, these make a combined resonance chamber.  Such sounds as b and a (as in father) are voiced “oral” sounds, that is, the voiced breath does not receive a nasal resonance.  As soon as the soft palate is lowered, however, and the nose added as a participating resonance chamber, the sounds b and a take on a peculiar “nasal” quality and become, respectively, m and the nasalized vowel written an in French (e.g., sang, tant).  The only English sounds[17] that normally receive a nasal resonance are m, n, and the ng sound of sing.  Practically all sounds, however, may be nasalized, not only the vowels—­nasalized vowels are common in all parts of the world—­but such sounds as l or z.  Voiceless nasals are perfectly possible.  They occur, for instance, in Welsh and in quite a number of American Indian languages.

[Footnote 17:  Aside from the involuntary nasalizing of all voiced sounds in the speech of those that talk with a “nasal twang.”]

The organs that make up the oral resonance chamber may articulate in two ways.  The breath, voiced or unvoiced, nasalized or unnasalized, may be allowed to pass through the mouth without being checked or impeded at any point; or it may be either momentarily checked or allowed to stream through a greatly narrowed passage with resulting air friction.  There are also transitions between the two latter types of articulation.  The unimpeded breath takes on a particular color or quality in accordance with the varying shape of the oral resonance chamber.  This shape is chiefly