pronounciation of ng in english

Ask specific questions about your target languages. Beginner questions welcome!
User avatar
smallwhite
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2386
Joined: Mon Jul 06, 2015 6:55 am
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Native: Cantonese;
Good: English, French, Spanish, Italian;
Mediocre: Mandarin, German, Swedish, Dutch.
.
x 4876

Re: pronounciation of ng in english

Postby smallwhite » Wed Nov 18, 2020 3:02 am

Does SCMT hear any /g/ in the Cantonese pronunciations of “星“ on Forvo below?

https://forvo.com/search/星/yue/
0 x
Dialang or it didn't happen.

User avatar
rdearman
Site Admin
Posts: 7231
Joined: Thu May 14, 2015 4:18 pm
Location: United Kingdom
Languages: English (N)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1836
x 23120
Contact:

Re: pronounciation of ng in english

Postby rdearman » Thu Nov 19, 2020 10:55 am

I don't know any of that technical whoha about vernacular defibrillators or whatever. But I do know that SCMT is 100% correct and the g is pronounced in the word sing and everything else they are saying about English pronunciation is correct.
1 x
: 0 / 150 Read 150 books in 2024

My YouTube Channel
The Autodidactic Podcast
My Author's Newsletter

I post on this forum with mobile devices, so excuse short msgs and typos.

Nogon
Green Belt
Posts: 305
Joined: Sat May 13, 2017 6:21 pm
Languages: German (N), Swedish (C), English (?), French (A2), Esperanto (A2). Reading Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Afrikaans. Wanting to learn Polish, Yiddish
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16039
x 1068

Re: pronounciation of ng in english

Postby Nogon » Thu Nov 19, 2020 11:24 am

English not being my native language, I really can't say authoritatively whether one should or should not pronounce the "g" in the ng-combination, or where to pronounce it and where not. I can say though, that I sometimes hear a clear "g"-sound where I don't expect it, for example here, where Anthony Lauder says "There are plenty of books for learning popular languages" just in the beginning of this video. Do you hear it too?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43P7nlyjecI
0 x
Assimil French : 65 / 113
Active wave : 15 / 113

User avatar
Deinonysus
Brown Belt
Posts: 1216
Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2016 6:06 pm
Location: MA, USA
Languages:  
• Native: English
• Advanced: French
• Intermediate: German,
   Spanish, Hebrew
• Beginner: Italian,
   Arabic
x 4620

Re: pronounciation of ng in english

Postby Deinonysus » Thu Nov 19, 2020 11:30 am

rdearman wrote:I don't know any of that technical whoha about vernacular defibrillators or whatever. But I do know that SCMT is 100% correct and the g is pronounced in the word sing and everything else they are saying about English pronunciation is correct.

Well the distinction here is that of course the letter "g" has an effect here (we are saying "sing", not "sin"), but I think the confusion is that the letter g in "sing" does not add a second sound that is the same as the "g" in "big", but rather it changes the consonant "n" so that instead of being pronounced in the usual place, which is just behind your teeth, it is pronounced in the back of your mouth, in the same place that you would pronounce a "g" or a "k". The two letters combine here to create one sound "ng" rather than two separate sounds "n" and "g".

If you carefully to this sesame street clip I think you will hear that the singers are not adding a hard "g" sound at the end of "sing" but rather they are producing one sound "ng" that is like "n" but pronounced further back in the mouth like "g" or "k".

3 x
/daɪ.nə.ˈnaɪ.səs/

User avatar
Deinonysus
Brown Belt
Posts: 1216
Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2016 6:06 pm
Location: MA, USA
Languages:  
• Native: English
• Advanced: French
• Intermediate: German,
   Spanish, Hebrew
• Beginner: Italian,
   Arabic
x 4620

Re: pronounciation of ng in english

Postby Deinonysus » Thu Nov 19, 2020 11:45 am

Nogon wrote:English not being my native language, I really can't say authoritatively whether one should or should not pronounce the "g" in the ng-combination, or where to pronounce it and where not. I can say though, that I sometimes hear a clear "g"-sound where I don't expect it, for example here, where Anthony Lauder says "There are plenty of books for learning popular languages" just in the beginning of this video. Do you hear it too?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43P7nlyjecI

Yes, he inserted a hard "k" sound after the "ng" sound and before the "l". However, he does not seem to do that systematically and the next time he says "learning" after that, there is not a hard "g" or "k" sound.

We are now getting into the realm of "phonetics" rather than "phonemics". That means that we are getting out of general rules and into exactly what an individual speaker is saying at any given time. That means that that general rules like "the ng at the end of sing is one sound" or "b is a voiced sound" or "the ch sound in Bach isn't used in most English dialects" are often violated in individual cases by individual speakers, and may also vary by dialect.
4 x
/daɪ.nə.ˈnaɪ.səs/

Dragon27
Blue Belt
Posts: 616
Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2015 6:40 am
Languages: Russian (N)
English - best foreign language
Polish, Spanish - passive advanced
Tatar, German, French, Greek - studying
x 1375

Re: pronounciation of ng in english

Postby Dragon27 » Thu Nov 19, 2020 4:18 pm

SCMT wrote:I'm waving the white flag. I say the 'g' hear the 'g,' although now I'm certain it is incorrect to do so.

Of course you hear and pronounce your native language absolutely correctly. It's just that you have a different (skewed by some factors, ahem, orthography) perception, and don't realize that. Realizing it does require getting into some technical details, though (which aren't really that complicated).
Shift of perspective is quite often not an easy thing to do psychologically. Our brain refuses to do that, thinking it's being tricked into believing that 2+2=5 somehow.

Deinonysus wrote:Well the distinction here is that of course the letter "g" has an effect here...

Yeah, it's kind of like thinking that 'e' in 'fame' is pronounced, because it's clearly different from 'fam'. The letter does have an influence on pronunciation of the whole word (or the pronunciation of the other letters in the word), but doesn't actually directly correspond to any sound.

Or (in case of Russian), that "ь" is pronounced in "мать", because it changes the pronunciation of the last letter to its palatalized version (making it different from the one in "мат").
Last edited by Dragon27 on Fri Nov 20, 2020 12:23 pm, edited 3 times in total.
4 x

vonPeterhof
Blue Belt
Posts: 879
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2015 1:55 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C2), Japanese (~C1), German (~B2), Kazakh (~B1), Norwegian (~A2)
Studying: Kazakh, Mandarin, Coptic
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1237
x 2833
Contact:

Re: pronounciation of ng in english

Postby vonPeterhof » Thu Nov 19, 2020 4:36 pm

Deinonysus wrote:Yes, he inserted a hard "k" sound after the "ng" sound and before the "l". However, he does not seem to do that systematically and the next time he says "learning" after that, there is not a hard "g" or "k" sound.

I remember I had a friend at college from rural Central Georgia who spoke with a strong US Southern accent, and she would normally pronounce the verb ending "-ing" as "-in", with neither a [g] or a [ŋ], but whenever she wanted to place emphasis or say something extra clearly she would add a consonant at the end that sounded distinctly voiceless to me, like "Just what do you think you're doingck?" Don't think I've heard anyone else with that accent do that though.

Also, just to add a bit more confusion to this thread ;), try seeing if you hear a difference between the English and Ukrainian pronunciations of the word "manga". Both pronunciations very clearly have a "hard" g sound, but only one is supposed to have [ŋ], a sound which the East Slavic languages are supposedly unique for not having in any way, shape or form.
3 x

jmar257
Green Belt
Posts: 268
Joined: Tue Apr 07, 2020 2:41 pm
Location: USA
Languages: English (N), español (Intermediate), français (Lower Intermediate), deutsch (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... hp?t=15645
x 680

Re: pronounciation of ng in english

Postby jmar257 » Thu Nov 19, 2020 6:46 pm

vonPeterhof wrote:
Deinonysus wrote:Yes, he inserted a hard "k" sound after the "ng" sound and before the "l". However, he does not seem to do that systematically and the next time he says "learning" after that, there is not a hard "g" or "k" sound.

I remember I had a friend at college from rural Central Georgia who spoke with a strong US Southern accent, and she would normally pronounce the verb ending "-ing" as "-in", with neither a [g] or a [ŋ], but whenever she wanted to place emphasis or say something extra clearly she would add a consonant at the end that sounded distinctly voiceless to me, like "Just what do you think you're doingck?" Don't think I've heard anyone else with that accent do that though.

I pronounced most -ing endings as "-in" in informal situations unless I'm placing emphasis on it, in which case I use the [ŋ]. I have no idea if I do what you're describing here...my accent is pretty general but with some Southern flavor, as that's where I grew up and have spent most of my life. I've both been told I do and don't have a Southern accent by different people, so it must be pretty mild unless you're tuned into things like the above.
0 x
Feel free to give me corrections in any of my target languages!

seito
Yellow Belt
Posts: 70
Joined: Wed May 02, 2018 10:36 am
Languages: English (N), Japanese (N4/N3)
x 109

Re: pronounciation of ng in english

Postby seito » Thu Nov 19, 2020 7:04 pm

I'm also a native speaker who's lived in the southeast and midwest. The idea of a "g" sound at the end of -ing sounds pretty strange to me. Nor do I remember hearing this on TV (even from non-native speakers). I've always heard people pronounce it with [ŋ] or just treating it the same as "in."
1 x

User avatar
Deinonysus
Brown Belt
Posts: 1216
Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2016 6:06 pm
Location: MA, USA
Languages:  
• Native: English
• Advanced: French
• Intermediate: German,
   Spanish, Hebrew
• Beginner: Italian,
   Arabic
x 4620

Re: pronounciation of ng in english

Postby Deinonysus » Thu Nov 19, 2020 8:02 pm

vonPeterhof wrote:
Deinonysus wrote:Yes, he inserted a hard "k" sound after the "ng" sound and before the "l". However, he does not seem to do that systematically and the next time he says "learning" after that, there is not a hard "g" or "k" sound.

I remember I had a friend at college from rural Central Georgia who spoke with a strong US Southern accent, and she would normally pronounce the verb ending "-ing" as "-in", with neither a [g] or a [ŋ], but whenever she wanted to place emphasis or say something extra clearly she would add a consonant at the end that sounded distinctly voiceless to me, like "Just what do you think you're doingck?" Don't think I've heard anyone else with that accent do that though.

Also, just to add a bit more confusion to this thread ;), try seeing if you hear a difference between the English and Ukrainian pronunciations of the word "manga". Both pronunciations very clearly have a "hard" g sound, but only one is supposed to have [ŋ], a sound which the East Slavic languages are supposedly unique for not having in any way, shape or form.
Well, maybe it would be better to say that the East Slavic languages don't have a phonemic /ŋ/, but it can show up as an allophone in any language that has any velar consonants and allows any nasal to get next to one due to assimilation. Similarly, few if any languages have a phonemic /ɱ/ (labiodental nasal), but it can show up in any language that lets a nasal show up before a /v/ or /f/, including in English.
1 x
/daɪ.nə.ˈnaɪ.səs/


Return to “Practical Questions and Advice”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests