Nasal voice: too much resonance, or too little

The valve nobody thinks about

At the back of the roof of your mouth, the soft palate can rise to seal off the nasal cavity or lower to open it. This seal is the velopharyngeal valve, and it opens and closes constantly while you speak, faster than you could consciously manage.

English uses only three sounds that are supposed to be nasal: m, n and ng. For those, the palate lowers and sound resonates through the nose. For every other sound in the language the palate should rise and seal, keeping the sound in the mouth.

Both problems below are failures of that valve, in opposite directions. This is one part of resonance; the broader picture of how the vocal tract shapes sound is in how the voice works.

Hypernasality: too much nose

The valve is not sealing when it should, so air and sound escape into the nose during sounds that ought to be oral. Vowels take on a honking quality, and pressure consonants like p, b, s and t weaken because the pressure needed to produce them leaks away.

Causes include cleft palate, whether repaired or submucous and undiagnosed; enlarged adenoids that have been removed, which occasionally reveals a valve that was relying on them; neurological conditions affecting palate movement; and rarely, learned patterns with no structural cause.

A rough self-test: say a long “eee” and pinch your nostrils shut halfway through. Almost nothing should change, because “eee” is not a nasal sound. If the sound changes noticeably, air is going through your nose that should not be.

Hyponasality: too little nose

The opposite — the nasal passage is blocked or the palate is over-sealing, so the three sounds that should be nasal cannot resonate properly. This is the “blocked nose” voice, and it is what most people actually mean when they say someone sounds nasal, which is why the terminology causes so much confusion.

The giveaway is that m starts to sound like b and n like d. “Many men” becomes “beddy bed”. Causes are mechanical: a cold, allergies, a deviated septum, nasal polyps, or enlarged adenoids.

Same test, opposite result: say “mmm” and pinch your nostrils. The sound should change dramatically, because it depends on nasal resonance. If pinching makes little difference, sound was not getting through the nose in the first place.

The confusion that matters for voice training

Here is where this becomes practically important, and it trips up a lot of people working on voice feminisation.

Feminisation training involves brightening resonance and moving the sound forward in the mouth. Forward and bright is the goal. But “forward” is frequently misheard as “through the nose”, and people end up producing a genuinely hypernasal voice while believing they are producing a brighter one.

The distinction is real and physical. Oral forward resonance concentrates sound at the front of the mouth, around the hard palate and teeth, with the velopharyngeal valve sealed. Nasal resonance sends sound through the nose with the valve open. Both feel “forward” in a vague sense, which is why the instruction is so easily misapplied.

The nose-pinch test settles it. Speak a sentence with no m, n or ng sounds in it — something like “the ships were docked at the far side of the harbour” — and pinch your nostrils partway through. If the sound is unchanged, your resonance is properly oral. If it changes, you are routing sound through your nose, and that is not the brightness you were aiming for. It reads as nasal rather than feminine, and it is one of the more common reasons voice training results disappoint.

What to do about each

For hyponasality, treat the obstruction. This is an ENT problem rather than a voice one: allergies, septum, polyps or adenoids. The voice corrects itself once air can pass.

For hypernasality, assessment comes first, because the treatment depends entirely on the cause. A structural valve problem may need surgery; a learned pattern responds to therapy. A speech-language pathologist is the right starting point, and instrumental assessment can measure how much sound is actually escaping rather than relying on impression. Our voice therapy page covers what working with a therapist involves.

For the training-related version — where the valve is normal and the habit is new — the correction is usually quick once identified. Practise with the pinch test as feedback, and use words free of nasal consonants until oral resonance is reliable. This is exactly the kind of thing that is very hard to self-diagnose and very easy for a therapist to hear in one session, which is a large part of the argument for working with one rather than only following videos.

Nasality and surgery

Worth stating clearly: pitch surgery does not change nasality. Glottoplasty and the other procedures on this site operate on the vocal folds, which are the sound source. Nasality is a property of the filter above them — the palate, nose and mouth. They are separate systems.

So a voice that sounds nasal before surgery will sound nasal at a higher pitch afterwards. If nasality is what actually bothers you or the people listening to you, surgery is not the intervention, and identifying that before rather than after is worth the price of an assessment.

Keep reading

• MTF voice training
• How the voice works
• How to project your voice
• Voice therapy

Sources

Frequently asked

What makes a voice sound nasal?

Two opposite things. Hypernasality is too much sound escaping through the nose because the soft palate is not sealing off the nasal cavity during sounds that should be oral. Hyponasality is too little, because the nasal passage is blocked, so the three sounds that should be nasal — m, n and ng — cannot resonate. Most people saying nasal actually mean the second.

How can I tell which type I have?

Pinch your nostrils while speaking. Say a long eee and pinch halfway through: almost nothing should change, because eee is not a nasal sound. If it changes noticeably, you are hypernasal. Then say mmm and pinch: the sound should change dramatically. If it barely changes, you are hyponasal.

Why does my voice sound nasal after voice feminisation training?

Because feminisation training asks for forward, bright resonance, and forward is frequently misheard as through the nose. Oral forward resonance concentrates sound at the front of the mouth with the nasal valve sealed; nasal resonance sends it through the nose. Both feel forward, but only one reads as feminine.

How do I fix a nasal-sounding voice from training?

Use the nose-pinch test as feedback. Practise sentences containing no m, n or ng sounds, pinching your nostrils partway through — if the sound is unchanged, your resonance is properly oral. This is hard to self-diagnose and easy for a therapist to hear in one session.

Will voice surgery change how nasal I sound?

No. Pitch surgery operates on the vocal folds, which are the sound source. Nasality is a property of the filter above them — the palate, nose and mouth. A voice that sounds nasal before surgery will sound nasal at a higher pitch afterwards.