Talk:numquam

Pronunciation

I don't know how much is actually known on this topic since it is such a rare occurrence in the Latin language, but is the pronunciation of numquam for sure /num.kʷam/? The reason I ask is because this to me indicates that the phonetic realization is [nʊm.kʷã], since /m/ becomes a nasalized vowel except before stops. However, the phone /m/ only occurs before labials, but this is a velar stop (albeit this stop is labialized). Since it is labialized, I'm unsure if the correct phone would therefore be [ŋ], or rather a labialized form of it as indicated by the grapheme <m>. But wouldn't this mean that it is an allophone of /n/ as most pre-stop coda-position nasals are and be written as /n/ in the phonemic transcription?

I myself am curious as to what scholars believe is the realization of this nasal and how it is treated among other nasal allophones in the language.

-Jmolina116 (talk) 22:19, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Or perhaps the <m> is entirely derivational from the original <num>, so that the pronunciations is [nʊŋkʷã] /nunkʷam/ since it is before a velar stop. -Jmolina116 (talk) 02:47, 3 April 2013 (UTC)