# hangar (pronunciation)



## Ali Smith

Hi,

Do native speakers of English ever pronounce _hangar_ in such a way that it does _not_ sound the same as _hanger_? I've never heard a native speaker pronounce _hanger_ and _hangar_ differently, but Merriam-Webster lists two different pronunciations.

Thanks!


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## Hermione Golightly

I pronounce them the same although I rarely use the word hangar, not since I sold the jet. The stress is on the first syllable so who cares about the second. In context we know what the word has to be. The last is a _schwa_ sound, 'uh', in my non-rhotic way.


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## heypresto

Ali Smith said:


> I've never heard a native speaker pronounce _hanger_ and _hangar_ differently


Nor have I, but maybe they do in AE?


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## dojibear

Hermione Golightly said:


> not since I sold the jet


  

AE speakers pronounce them the same. As Hermione says, the last vowel sound is usually "schwa" in both words.

This causes some spelling problems. Is it "sep*a*rate" or "sep*e*rate"? I can't tell from the pronuncation, since the *a* or *e* is a schwa sound.


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## natkretep

I say* /ˈhaŋə/* for both. I've never heard the second MW pronunciation (Definition of HANGAR), with an additional /g/ sound (like in _longer _or _linger_).


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## Ali Smith

natkretep said:


> I say* /ˈhaŋə/* for both. I've never heard the second MW pronunciation (Definition of HANGAR), with an additional /g/ sound (like in _longer _or _linger_).


Yeah, like the one in "finger". I remember our linguistics professor telling us that "singer" does _not_ rhyme with "finger". But apparently some speakers pronounce "hangar" like "finger".


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## natkretep

I have just realised that _longer_ isn't a good example, because you have _longer_ as somebody who longs for someone or something, and _longer_ as the comparative adjective for _long_. They are distinguished not by spelling but by pronunciation.


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## sdgraham

heypresto said:


> Nor have I, but maybe they do in AE?


Not I -- and I've spent a lot of time around hangars.


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## Riyan

Merriam-Webster gives /hæŋ.ɡə/ as an alternative pronunciation of 'hangar' and I don't see anything wrong with it, because /ŋɡ/ mostly occurs word-medially (with some exceptions).
Examples: Finger, linger, English, longer* etc., have /ŋɡ/ rather than /ŋ/.

Middle English and probably Old English had /ŋɡ/ word-finally, but in Modern English, we have always /ŋ/ in word-final positions (except some dialects such as West Midlands and North West England).
Examples: Ping, ring, sing etc., have  /ŋ/ word-finally.

In most cases, word-final /ŋ/ remains /ŋ/ when certain suffixes (mostly_ -ing_ and_ -er_) are appended.

Examples: Singer, singing, hanging, hanger, ringing etc., have /ŋ/.

/ŋg/ in 'hangar' is not incorrect or unacceptable because 'hangar' is directly derived from the French word and has never had only /ŋ/. If it were _hang_ + _ar_ then only /ŋ/ would be correct in standard varieties of Modern English.


* 'Long' has /ŋ/ but 'longer' has /ŋɡ/, why? Because comparatives and superlatives have almost always /ŋg/.
Another example would be 'young' with /ŋ/ and 'younger' with /ŋg/.

Edit: clarified.


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## Enquiring Mind

It's got to be /'hæŋə/, Ali, otherwise my little limerick (reproduced here with Sven's kind permission) won't work:
_A Norwegian friend with a banger,
Kept the car locked away in a hangar.
He explained: 'Well, you see
It's been unroadworthy
Since I crashed it last year in Stavanger.'_

Here, of course, the phonetics don't work: 
_A man with a vintage old banger
Said, reversing the car from its hangar,
"We shall need it tonight
For a pre-theatre bite.
We're going to see 'Look Back in Anger'."_


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## Loob

Riyan said:


> I favour /ŋg/ in 'hangar'


What do you mean by saying you "favour" it?

Have you ever heard anyone use it, other than speakers of varieties that also have /ŋg/ in _*singing*_?


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## london calling

Hermione Golightly said:


> I pronounce them the same although I rarely use the word hangar, not since I sold the jet. The stress is on the first syllable so who cares about the second. In context we know what the word has to be. The last is a _schwa_ sound, 'uh', in my non-rhotic way.





Loob said:


> What do you mean by saying you "favour" it?
> 
> Have you ever heard anyone use it, other than speakers of varieties that also have /ŋg/ in _*singing*_?


I wonder how a Liverpudlian would pronounce hangar and hanger, given their pronunciations of 'singer' to rhyme with 'finger', which to me is a feature of dialect, not standard English. 

I too am curious to know why you favour it, Ryan.


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## Andygc

I don't see how French etymology in the 19th century has any bearing on pronunciation in the 21st century. The question was to ask if the two words are pronounced differently by the same speaker. I've heard two pronunciations, with and without a hard 'g', but I've never heard anybody use one for "hangar" and the other for "hanger". Like sdgraham, I've spent a lot of my life around hangars, in my case on airfields where both pronunciations could be heard.


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## Riyan

Loob said:


> What do you mean by saying you "favour" it?
> 
> Have you ever heard anyone use it, other than speakers of varieties that also have /ŋg/ in _*singing*_?


No, but Merriam-Webster gives /hæŋ.ɡə/ as an alternative pronunciation of 'hangar'. I don't see why it should be incorrect or unacceptable because I explained above.

(I've worded my post#9 incorrectly, I guess. It should be "I don't see anything wrong with /hæŋ.ɡə/" or something. )


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## Edinburgher

sdgraham said:


> I've spent a lot of time around hangars.


You mean you've been hanging around them quite a bit.


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## Loob

Riyan said:


> No, but Merriam-Webster gives /hæŋ.ɡə/ as an alternative pronunciation of 'hangar'. I don't see why it should be incorrect or unacceptable because I explained above.
> 
> (I've worded my post#9 incorrectly, I guess. It should be "I don't see anything wrong with /hæŋ.ɡə/" or something. )


Yes, it would have been helpful to make clear you were talking theoretically.


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## Riyan

london calling said:


> I wonder how a Liverpudlian would pronounce hangar and hanger, given their pronunciations of 'singer' to rhyme with 'finger', which to me is a feature of dialect, not standard English.
> 
> I too am curious to know why you favour it, Ryan.


According to Wikipedia article on Scouse:
_NG-coalescence is not present as with other Northern English accents, for instance realising along as [əˈlɒŋɡ]._

They probably pronounce it with /ŋɡ/

(I've edited my post#9.)


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## london calling

I know that, hence my question. 😊I just wonder if to them hanger and hangar have the same pronunciation (that is to say not standard English pronunciation).


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## Andygc

Sadly, I never discussed clothes hangers with Liverpudlian aircraft engineers inside hangars, but given the way they pronounced other words, such as "singer" and "winger", I'd have been very surprised if they had pronounced "hanger" any differently.


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## london calling

As I also suspect and is what I meant. 😊


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## Hermione Golightly

> (except some dialects such as West Midlands and North West England).


I am wondering about the "Brummies" from Birmingham. Do they pronounce bot the same with their renowned regional  /ŋg/?   What is the origin of this sound and, maybe, its persistence?
One of the many wonderful differences between nowadays and when I was born is that people can speak exactly as they wish.  The BBC would not allow anybody on air who didn't speak that suave mellifluous upper class dialect that sounds so strange now. They may even have corrected the grammar in their reports, so that if if the speaker had said "Them what's agin capi'al punishment divven na nowt. ", it would have been translated into standard Oxford.


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## Keith Bradford

Enquiring Mind said:


> ...Here, of course, the phonetics don't work:
> _A man with a vintage old banger
> Said, reversing the car from its hangar,
> "We shall need it tonight
> For a pre-theatre bite.
> We're going to see 'Look Back in Anger'."_


The phonetics work perfectly for me, but then I have the great advantage of being born only a stone's throw from Birmingham; although I can distinguish between /ŋ/ and  /ŋg/, it never crosses my mind that they're actually different in any meaningful way. They're like a Scottish rolled "R" and its English equivalent - personal options. Certainly not different enough to spoil a perfectly good limerick! (In which I'd pronounce all three words with /ŋg/ - I only drop the /g/ when it's terminal, e.g: /siŋgiŋ/, if at all.)


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## Keith Bradford

london calling said:


> ...I just wonder if to them hanger and hangar have the same pronunciation (that is to say not standard English pronunciation).


You mean "not *Southern *English pronunciation", I think.


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## Edinburgher

If you listen to the pronunciations given in WRD for "hangar", all except one use /ŋ/.  Rather curiously, the only one that uses /ŋg/ is RP!


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## london calling

Keith Bradford said:


> You mean "not *Southern *English pronunciation", I think.


I mean Standard Southern British English, which is what the IPA symbols in dictionaries refer to, generally speaking . 

See the OLD, for example. It has the standard UK and US pronunciations. 
hangar noun - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes | Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com


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## Andygc

I dont see that the question has anything to do with regional variation. It's about the words having the *same* pronunciation. Some people will rhyme with _Stavanger_ and some will rhyme with _anger_, but whichever they do, they remain consistent with _hanger_, _hangar_ and _banger_. 

Having spent almost all my childhood in Birmingham, but having avoided acquiring the accent, I can happily recite both of Enquiring Mind's limericks without any problems with rhyming.


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## london calling

As far as I'm concerned singer pronounced to rhyme with finger is a regional thing.


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## Andygc

london calling said:


> As far as I'm concerned singer pronounced to rhyme with finger is a regional thing.


Neither I nor anybody else said it wasn't. I don't understand why there's so much talk about regional pronunciation in this thread when the question is about *individuals pronouncing hangar and hanger differently*. They don't.


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## Edinburgher

As I read the original question, it is not about pronouncing the two words differently, but about pronouncing _hangar_ differently from _hanger_.  That may sound like the same thing, but it isn't when the OP seems to be starting from the mistaken premise that there is only one pronunciation for the latter, and was unaware that some people do pronounce _hanger_ with /ŋɡ/.


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## Andygc

Edinburgher said:


> pronouncing the two words differently, but about pronouncing _hangar_ differently from _hanger_


    The two words are _hangar _and _hanger_, so what's the difference between "pronouncing the two words differently" and "pronouncing _hangar_ differently from _hanger"?_


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## london calling

Andygc said:


> Neither I nor anybody else said it wasn't. I don't understand why there's so much talk about regional pronunciation in this thread when the question is about *individuals pronouncing hangar and hanger differently*. They don't.


They might do if they're from Liverpool or the West Midlands. That needs to be clear and in addition some appear to be contesting the fact that I used the term standard English. 

Therefore, once and for all and to sum up all that has been said here, they are pronounced the same way if the speaker speaks standard UK or US English, but not necessarily if the speaker uses a regional pronunciation.


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## Edinburgher

Andygc said:


> so what's the difference


I thought I'd explained that.  It's about what the OP really meant by their question.  Reading between the lines, the OP was under the impression that there is only one pronunciation of _hanger_, and thought that the same was true of _hangar_ until becoming aware, by chance, that M-W lists two pronunciations for it.  I don't know if they checked whether M-W also lists two for _hanger_ (it doesn't).  The OP indicated that they had never heard any native speaker pronounce _hangar_ with a hard /g/ and was simply asking whether any do.  I infer that they also never heard anyone pronounce _hanger_ with a hard /g/ either, and the thought that anyone might had never even crossed their mind.


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## Andygc

london calling said:


> Therefore, once and for all and to sum up all that has been said here, they are pronounced the same way if the speaker speaks standard UK or US English, but not necessarily if the speaker uses a regional pronunciation.


You have no justification for that statement. Firstly, there is no such thing as standard UK or US English. Keith and I have both noted the lack of difference in regional pronunciation of the two words. Given that we covered both Liverpool and the area around Birmingham, both noted for their tendency to rhyme _hanger _with _finger_, and nobody has made any suggestion at all that anywhere else is different, I feel pretty confident that the answer is "they don't".



Edinburgher said:


> Reading between the lines


In my work, reading between the lines was a route to disaster. If the question was not clear I asked for clarification.


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## london calling

Standard Southern British English exists. Look it up.


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## Andygc

london calling said:


> Standard Southern British English exists. Look it up.


I don't need to look it up and you don't need to be rude. I didn't say it didn't exist, I said


Andygc said:


> there is no such thing as standard UK or US English


by which I was quoting you:


london calling said:


> the speaker speaks standard UK or US English


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## london calling

Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude. 😕I just left a smiley out by mistake. And I made it clear what I meant by standard English in a previous post (no. 25).


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## Keith Bradford

I think that in this (and many such discussions) there is an assumption that standard English = southern English.  (I speak of Britain here.)  Truly, we all know that for at least a generation that has not been true - you only have to listen to broadcasts from the 1950s to hear how radically our speech has changed.  But some of us are more acutely aware of this because, coming from the North or the Midlands, we have been criticised, misunderstood, corrected and occasionally despised for not speaking like our present London-raised and Eton-educated prime minister.

The OP asked "Do native speakers of English ever pronounce _hangar_ in such a way that it does _not_ sound the same as _hanger_? I've never heard a native speaker pronounce _hanger_ and _hangar_ differently, but Merriam-Webster lists two different pronunciations." The clear answer is* Yes they do: in Britain at least they use both those pronunciations and neither can be claimed as definitive.*


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## Hermione Golightly

Does an individual change their pronunciation of a word from time to time? Yes, if they pronounce it so differently from those around them especially if they are aware that their normal pronunciation impedes effective communicaton. Or, for social reasons. Even the royals understand that and quite often speak almost normally on informal occasions. They can't help their vowels any more than I can help my glottal stop tendency.
Keith wrote


> _Truly, we all know that for at least a generation that has not been true - you only have to listen to broadcasts from the 1950s to hear how radically our speech has changed.  But some of us are more acutely aware of this because, coming from the North or the Midlands, we have been criticised, misunderstood, corrected and occasionally despised for not speaking like our present London-raised and Eton-educated prime minister. _


 My italics.

Hear, hear. I think I wrote yesterday about this. It was definitely in the 60's that this class prejudice died down. It was so great that it could be described as racist.
People might continue to think it but most think twice before expressing their fool thoughts. Times have changed so much that there are even classes in learning to speak like a local. At high school and grammar school we weren't allowed to talk in Geordie, the dialect of Newcastle upon Tyne. The boys did out of class, but not us girls, although a few did come from working class homes on scholarships. If you wanted to stand a better chance of getting into a top university and if you envisaged a professional life you would be advised to learn to talk proper.
In the early 60's if you did get into Oxford,maybe same for Cambridge, your accent became a badge of honour.
Anyway I would be very surprised if anybody was entirely consistent.
Take the word 'garage' with three different pronunciations. I suppose my 'ga-rahj happens to be less posh than Frenchy  ga - 'raaahj, but posher than 'ga-ridge.
I might consider changing mine to the one of the person I was speaking to, for fear of sounding superior to them, if I liked them.
It sounds ridiculous! Coming from the deepest north-east of England I suppose I am hypersensitive.


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## Loob

Intrigued by the fact that it was _Merriam-Webste_r, an American dictionary, that listed both the /ŋ/ and the /ŋg/ pronunciations, I've gone down the One Look Dictionary list to see which other dictionaries do that.

The two that I found were also AmE:
_- Lexico US Dictionary (Hangar | Definition of Hangar by Oxford Dictionary on Lexico.com)
- American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (The American Heritage Dictionary entry: hangar)_

This is interesting, I think, as the thread, so far, has focused to a large extent on BrE.


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## kentix

I have never heard anyone pronounce it _hang ger_ but if I did I would assume it was a general way they pronounce things (link sing ger) rather than a specific pronunciation of hangar.


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## Langton's Aunt

Conversely, and going back to #31,  I'm pretty sure that I pronounce _hanger _without the /g/ and _hangar _with, though now I'm thinking about it too much to be absolutely sure what I would say spontaneously.


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## JulianStuart

kentix said:


> I have never heard anyone pronounce it _hang ger_ but if I did I would assume it was a general way they pronounce things (link sing ger) rather than a specific pronunciation of hangar.


Long Gisland comes to mind in all these discussions  The entry for singer also mentions one who singes  (like Nat's one who longs).


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## london calling

Hermione Golightly said:


> Does an individual change their pronunciation of a word from time to time? Yes, if they pronounce it so differently from those around them especially if they are aware that their normal pronunciation impedes effective communicaton. Or, for social reasons. Even the royals understand that and quite often speak almost normally on informal occasions. They can't help their vowels any more than I can help my glottal stop tendency.
> Keith wrote
> My italics.
> 
> Hear, hear. I think I wrote yesterday about this. It was definitely in the 60's that this class prejudice died down. It was so great that it could be described as racist.
> People might continue to think it but most think twice before expressing their fool thoughts. Times have changed so much that there are even classes in learning to speak like a local. At high school and grammar school we weren't allowed to talk in Geordie, the dialect of Newcastle upon Tyne. The boys did out of class, but not us girls, although a few did come from working class homes on scholarships. If you wanted to stand a better chance of getting into a top university and if you envisaged a professional life you would be advised to learn to talk proper.
> In the early 60's if you did get into Oxford,maybe same for Cambridge, your accent became a badge of honour.
> Anyway I would be very surprised if anybody was entirely consistent.
> Take the word 'garage' with three different pronunciations. I suppose my 'ga-rahj happens to be less posh than Frenchy  ga - 'raaahj, but posher than 'ga-ridge.
> I might consider changing mine to the one of the person I was speaking to, for fear of sounding superior to them, if I liked them.
> It sounds ridiculous! Coming from the deepest north-east of England I suppose I am hypersensitive.


Just to be clear 😊.I am in no way criticising anybody's accent. I have good friends from all walks of life and from different parts of the Uk. If someone says hang-ger there is no way it could be a problem for me. 

I do know what you mean about changing your accent. Speaking as I do I had to adopt a Cockney accent at school because I was teased for speaking 'posh'. A form of self defence which carried on until the 6th form when I became confident enough to tell them all to take a running jump. 😂So as you can see, it isn't only regional speakers who suffer at the hands of snobs. Reverse snobbery is just as bad.


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## Hermione Golightly

That is so true. My daughter suffered terribly when she got back to England from her international European life. She did not talk 'posh' at all but she did talk educated. She refused to conform and eventually emigrated to the USA where she gets fed up with being told about her beautiful accent.
My bro emigrated to Durham, North Carolina, USA. He was a doctor. He felt he had to learn to speak southern when a patient walked out, swearing furiously that he "ain't goin' to be treated by no damn Yankee!"

Added - We aren't Cockney here in SW outer London borough, more Estuary or bastard Surrey, should that be 'Westuary'.


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## Andygc

Ali Smith said:


> Do native speakers of English ever pronounce _hangar_ in such a way that it does _not_ sound the same as _hanger_?





Keith Bradford said:


> The clear answer is* Yes they do: in Britain at least they use both those pronunciations and neither can be claimed as definitive.*


No "they" don't. Both pronunciations are used in Britain, but "they" who say hang-ger say it for both hanger and hangar, and "they" who say hanger say it for both hanger and hangar.


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## london calling

Hermione Golightly said:


> Added - We aren't Cockney here in SW outer London borough, more Estuary or bastard Surrey, should that be 'Westuary'.


It was still Cockney in my day, not southeastestuary, innit! 🤣


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