nhăm

See also: Appendix:Variations of "nham"

Vietnamese

Etymology

Northern form with the commonly seen nasalization of lateral, compare lớn vs. nhớn, lời vs. nhời, lài vs. nhài, lạt vs. nhạt.

This sound shift originally started as nasal assimilation within the proximity of the phoneme /m/: *m(V)l > /mɲ/ > /ɲ/ (as seen even in the loanword nhài); as lăm almost occurs only after mươi, the expected shift occurred.

Pronunciation

• (Hà Nội) IPA^(key): [ɲam˧˧]
• (Huế) IPA^(key): [ɲam˧˧]
• (Hồ Chí Minh City) IPA^(key): [ɲam˧˧]

Numeral

nhăm

1. Northern Vietnam form of lăm