Pathways to nasalization of the glottal approximant /h/ in Extremaduran Spanish: an aerodynamic exploration

Nasal spreading is often considered incompatible with oral obstruency, yet post-velopharyngeal nasal fricatives occur in several world languages. In certain Spanish varieties, the nasalized glottal approximant [ɦ̃] has been documented among rural speakers with lower educational backgrounds, but its origins remain unclear, as cited examples suggest both nasal spreading and spontaneous nasalization. These mid 20th-century descriptions are impressionistic, which is problematic given the acoustic overlap between nasality, voicing, and breathiness reported in the literature. This study explores [ɦ̃] aerodynamically in Extremaduran Spanish across phonological contexts associated with both nasal spreading and spontaneous nasalization. Preliminary data from 12 speakers from a rural area across two age and education-level groups show that the nasalized approximant [ɦ̃] occurs mainly in stressed syllables in the presence of nasal consonants, particularly via perseverative coarticulation. Intervocalic [ɦ] displays high voicing rates across environments, while adjacent vowels show minimal nasality, except for those in contexts where the glottal [ɦ] occurred in unstressed syllables. Elderly speakers nasalize significantly more, and higher education correlates with reduced nasalization. In contexts without nasal consonants, high voicing or adjacent vowel nasality may have led to earlier misclassifications as nasalized approximants. The results point to an ongoing generational change.