The difference in degree of nasality between oral, phonemic nasal and coarticulated nasalized low vowel /a/ ([ɐ̃]) is analyzed. The method follows that proposed by Chen (1997), in which acoustic nasality can be measured by the difference between the amplitude of the vowel’s first formant (A1) and the amplitude of the nasal peak amplitude in the vowel’s first or second harmonic (P0). The measurements were taken at three different time points (start, mid, end) in the vowel. The results show that the main difference between nasal and nasalized vowels is at the vowel’s end, the nasal vowel being considered more nasal than the nasalized counterpart. This difference may hint on perceptual clues to distinguish nasal from nasalized vowels in Brazilian Portuguese.

Nasal vowel, nasalization, coarticulation.