Nasal vowel
A nasal vowel is a vowel that produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through the mouth and the nose. In many languages, vowels that are adjacent to nasal consonants are produced partially or fully with a lowered velum. In English, vowels preceding nasal consonants are nasalized, but there is no phonemic distinction between nasal and oral vowels. In French, nasal vowels are phonemic, as words can differ only in whether a vowel is nasalized or not. For example, the words sait (="knows") and saint (="saint") are pronounced the same, except the vowel in saint is a nasal vowel and the vowel in sait is not.
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