# Allophones of が



## Rallino

Hello everyone!

My question may seem a bit weird, but I'm really curious about it! =)

I noticed this while listening to my japanese teacher, but I didn't interrupt the lesson just to ask it.

She pronunced: ながい - na-(n)gai; with a subtle, nasal "n" just before the 'g' sound.

Is it the standard pronunciation of this letter, or is it some sort of dialect? Because so far I've always pronounced that character with a straight and definite *G *sound. Should I pronunce it like that?


Thanks in advance!


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## rukiak

It is absolutely not standard.

I know some japanese say like that only when he/she has a cold.


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## ms291052

This is absolutely standard. According to Wikipedia, [g] and [ŋ] occur in free variation.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology#Weakening .

I can assure you this is normal. So much so that TV announcers are required to learn to pronounce [ŋa][ŋi][ŋɯ][ŋe][ŋo] just as they do any other consonant.


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## Yabanjin

Rallino said:


> Hello everyone!
> 
> My question may seem a bit weird, but I'm really curious about it! =)
> 
> I noticed this while listening to my japanese teacher, but I didn't interrupt the lesson just to ask it.
> 
> She pronunced: ながい - na-(n)gai; with a subtle, nasal "n" just before the 'g' sound.
> 
> Is it the standard pronunciation of this letter, or is it some sort of dialect? Because so far I've always pronounced that character with a straight and definite *G *sound. Should I pronunce it like that?


This is the standard pronunciation. I have a page about it  here.
Just to convince you, here is a picture from a Japanese pronunciation dictionary called 明解日本語アクセント辞典 (meikai nihongo akusento jiten). This dictionary uses か゜to indicate this sound rather than が. In this dictionary it is referred to as カ行鼻音 (kagyou bion), but I don't know if that is the standard terminology.


Whether you want to pronounce it like that is up to you but I guess you should copy how your teacher talks.


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## Rallino

Thanks for the links! They've been quite helpful really. I'll try to imitate my teacher's accent from now on =)


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## rukiak

ms291052 said:


> This is absolutely standard. According to Wikipedia, [g] and [ŋ] occur in free variation.
> See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology#Weakening .


As warned at the top of the site, "This article's citation style may be unclear. ".



ms291052 said:


> So much so that TV announcers are required to learn to pronounce [ŋa][ŋi][ŋɯ][ŋe][ŋo] just as they do any other consonant.


Do you have any experience recently in any broadcasting company? Or is this just quotation from some internet site like Japanese wiki (http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/鼻濁音)?

I think this site bellow presents a practical fact.
http://oshiete1.goo.ne.jp/qa394820.html

And what I want to point out is that we answerer have to take learner's side, not Japanese announcer's side, not boss of Japanese announcer's side, not just scholar's side, and not browser side.

>Yabanjin
>This is the standard pronunciation. I have a page about it here.
That page looks bizzare. What is GN sound? Is it related to this topic??

>Whether you want to pronounce it like that is up to you but I guess you should copy how your teacher talks.

I agree with you, but under a certain condition. 

In my opinion, it is quite possibly problematic that foreigners purposely learn and pronounce nasal in Japanese. 
There are wide range of difference in degree of nasal in Japanese, depending on the words or relation with preceding/following character.
i.e. After ん/n/ sound, it shoud be clear nasal, but as for the word like "nagai", even if it is required to pronounce as nasal, it should not be pronounced clearly, which is worse and more harsh than just /n/ sound without least nasal.

I think it is good of Rallino to have questions as he posted. 
I hope that Rallino's teacher is a native level speaker, and Rallino himself is talented speaker so that they speak moderate (not harsh) nasal


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## Rallino

rukiak said:


> I think it is good of Rallino to have questions as he posted.
> I hope that Rallino's teacher is a native level speaker, and Rallino himself is talented speaker so that they speak moderate (not harsh) nasal



Thank you!! 

My teacher, Uehara Mikiko, is indeed a native Japanese speaker; but she's been living in Turkey for more than 20 years now, and in such a long time, one can easily lose his/her native accent. That's why I asked whether it was a standard pronunciation or not 

Thanks again!


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## Yabanjin

rukiak said:


> >Yabanjin
> >This is the standard pronunciation. I have a page about it here.
> That page looks bizzare. What is GN sound? Is it related to this topic??


Yes, that is about the topic under discussion. Specifically the section the link points to. I'm sorry that you find my page bizarre. To try to clarify for you, the page is intended to answer the question of what the differences are between kana writing and the sounds Japanese people make when they talk. If you like, it's a "mythbuster" page for the myth that Japanese writing exactly corresponds to pronunciation. I welcome any feedback about the page. There are links at the bottom of it if you want to contact me personally.


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## teechan

This could be off the topic, but when I emphasize how long something is. I, almost intentionally, say "naNgai". It might be just a part of my dialect, but I was interested by this and googled "なんがーい", and got lots of hits. 

Anyway, one thing for sure is that I wouldn't pose even for a moment when somebody says nagai or naNgai...I believe it's not just because I'm ignorant enough...


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## Nino83

Minasan konnichiwa. 

I noticed that many people in Tōkyō pronounce -が like [ŋa] (similarly to the English word singing ['sɪŋɪŋ]. 
Here, for example, there are some pronunciations of the word _hiragana_. 
The two speakers in Ōsaka say [çiɾa*g*ána] and [çiɾa*ɣ*ána], one in Tōkyō says [çiɾa*g*ána] while other two speakers in Tōkyō say [çiɾa*ŋ*ána].  

I'd like to ask you: 
1) if you hear this difference (i.e if a speakers use [ŋa], for example in _koto ga_ [koto ŋa], you immediately think that he or she comes from Tōkyō) 
2) if this pronunciation is considered regional/dialectal or if it is considered standard (which one is used, for example, by journalists and anchormen?)  

Arigatō gozaimasu


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## Flaminius

Velar nasal [ŋ] is a characteristic of Eastern Japan.  I will post the isogloss map later.


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## Nino83

Flaminius said:


> Velar nasal [ŋ] is a characteristic of Eastern Japan. I will post the isogloss map later.


Thank you, Flaminius! 
It would be interesting to know the exact isogloss. Lately I'm listening to a Japanese rock band (Asian Kung-Fu Generation) whose singer comes from Shimada, Shizuoka (Eastern Japan), but he pronounces intervocalic /g/ as [g].


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## DaylightDelight

Traditionally nasal /ŋ/ is considered to be more "beautiful" and "sophisticated".
They say that professional speakers (announcers, anchor people, etc.) are required to use them properly.
However in recent years less and less people use them (actually less and less people *can* use them) in every day speech
and some experts think it might completely disappear from Japanese language in not so distant future.


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## Flaminius

Okay, so here are isogloss maps from 『日本言語地図』第1集 published by National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics in 1966 (you can find the page link in our resources thread; see other links for dialectology in general).

第1図 カガミ (鏡) の-G-の音 地図全体; an intervocalic /g/ with accent in the standard Japanese
第2図 カゲ (蔭) の-G-の音 地図全体; an intervocalic /g/ in non-accent position
第5図 ガンジツ (元日) のGA-の音 地図全体; a word initial /g/
第6図 ショオガツ (正月) の-GA-の音 地図全体; intervocalic, non-accent, on morpheme boundary?

Like DD mentioned above, the velar nasalis falling out of favour lately.  In a more conservative analysis, it is the opposition between [g] and [ŋ] that's dying out.  Judging from what people say it seems to be a young rapid phenomenon, about twenty years old at the maximum.  It probably involves not just younger generations but also older ones, hence the speed.  Someone reported that their grandfather transcribed 魔法少女まどか☆マギカ as 魔法マドカマニカ.  If someone cannot tell [g] and [ŋ], they tend to confuse [ŋ] with [n].  Since vioce actors whom this grandfather heard utter /magika/ more likely used the normative [ŋi] for /gi/, it sounded to him like /ni/.


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## ktdd

Wikipedia seems to have a pretty detailed account for this
Japanese phonology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you listen to Pimsleur's Japanese, it's pretty clear from the very beginning the female teacher and the male teacher are using different pronunciations.
すみません、英語[go]が[ga]わかりますか？
いいえ、わかりません。日本語[ŋo]が[ŋa]わかりますか？


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## Nino83

The last two maps are not easy to read (the same colour for [g] and [ŋ] and a very similar shape for the green ones).
According to these maps (the first two), Shizuoka was a "-ŋa-" area in 1966. The isoglosses changed so much in 50 years (and, unexpectedly, against national radio and television).
What I find interesting is the prenasalized [ⁿga] in Shikoku.
Is it possible that this difference between [ga] and [ŋa] is linked to the (reconstructed) prenasalized consonants /ⁿb, ⁿd, ⁿg/ of Old Japanese?
In other words, is it possible that they evolved in /ŋa, ⁿda, ⁿba/ of the Tōhoku dialect, the /ⁿga (ⁿba ⁿda?)/ of Shikoku and in the /ŋa/ of Eastern Japan, while they became /ba, da, ga/ in Kyōto and Ōsaka (Kansai) area?
Is there something (for example the first transcriptions of the Portuguese) attesting these differences?


ktdd said:


> すみません、英語[go]が[ga]わかりますか？
> いいえ、わかりません。日本語[ŋo]が[ŋa]わかりますか？


Interesting!


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## DaylightDelight

Nino83 said:


> Is it possible that this difference between [ga] and [ŋa] is linked to the (reconstructed) prenasalized consonants /ⁿb, ⁿd, ⁿg/ of Old Japanese?
> In other words, is it possible that they evolved in /ŋa, ⁿda, ⁿba/ of the Tōhoku dialect, the /ⁿga (ⁿba ⁿda?)/ of Shikoku and in the /ŋa/ of Eastern Japan, while they became /ba, da, ga/ in Kyōto and Ōsaka (Kansai) area?


There is a very famous study called 蝸牛考 (Study of Snails), in which a Japanese anthropologist studied how snails are called in various areas in Japan and constructed a hypothetical theory called 方言周圏論 ("Center versus periphery hepothesis" or "Surrounding-zones dialect theory"). Center versus periphery - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
According to this hypothesis, many linguistic/cultural influences started in Kyoto area (the capital and the cultural center of Japan for a long time) and spread outward in a concentric manner.  I don't know if it applies to the current case, but I suppose it is quite possible that /ng/ or /ŋ/ are closer to the old Japanese and the /g/ variation in Kyoto, Osaka area is a (relatively) newer development, started in that area and failed to spread wider.


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