SCMT wrote:tangleweeds wrote:I don't understand how you can participate authoritatively in this discussion.
You don't know how I can participate in a discussion about whether to pronounce the g in sing? Really?
No, she doesn't know how you can participate
authoratively. You repeatedly stated categorically that something was true in
all dialects of English, when that is absolutely not the case.
You also stated twice that you didn't know what /ŋ/ is, and made no attempt to find out what people were actually talking about while making your absolutist declarations. You told other native speakers that they're flat-out wrong, and now you're upset that the aforementioned other native speakers aren't happy with you. To be honest, I wouldn't be as polite as tangleweeds if I'd been involved in this discussion earlier and it was me that you were contradicting...
Historically, the G was always pronounced, and the [ŋ] sound simply arose when /n/ preceded /g/ or /k/, as is easily seen by looking at other Germanic languages in Central Europe and Scandinavia. We still see this in words like "ink" and "England". But in words like "singing", in most dialects/accents, the Gs have disappeared, and the NG simply denotes the /ŋ/.
(It's maybe worth noting that German immigration to the USA mostly centred around the Midwest, which has had noted effects on the local accents.)
This loss of sound is gradual, and there are dialects which still pronounce Gs in various positions, there are dialects where there is no G, and then there are people who don't pronounce the -ing suffix with /ŋ/, giving us forms written
singin' in various places.
All this variation is possible and acceptable, but the one widely regarded as the standard is the one that has no /g/ in most words.
tangleweeds wrote:SCMT wrote:There is no 'g' sound in pink.
What about the nasal sound before /k/? Is it the same as the sound at the end of 'pin' (or 'peen')?
Oh, and there's also an interesting word in the English language: 'length'. Can you transcribe sound by sound this word as you perceive it?
Look, this discussion has already pulled the original question off topic enough. If you think sin and sing have the same vowel sound, then we are never going to come to any reconciliation.
She's just curious and trying to understand where you're coming from.
Her question has piqued my curiosity too. I have the same vowel sound in "sin" and "sing", with a different final consonant, and I'm curious whether the change in vowel in your accent is caused by the N taking on an [ŋ] sound or something else. Tangleweeds's question quite neatly gets all the information we need from you to understand this point.
