# the "g" in the "-ing" [pronunciation]



## lampak

In different text when someone using colloquial language is quoted, the _g _in the _-ing_ ending is often replaced with an apostrophe, so the ending is _-in'_. I guess it means the _g_ wasn't pronounced, the problem is, I've always been taught (like on every other lesson) that the _g_ in _-ing_ is never pronounced. How is then this colloquial pronunciation different from a more formal one?


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## cyberpedant

lampak said:


> the _g_ in _-ing_ is never pronounced



Whoever taught you this was absolutely wrong.


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## Tazzler

There was an interesting work done by a linguist named William Labov that studied the different pronunciations of the ending 
ing" in various New York department stores. The more fashionable and expensive the store the more likely it was that the "ing" would be pronounced as a velar nasal.


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## George French

lampak said:


> I've always been taught (like on every other lesson) that the _g_ in _-ing_ is never pronounced.



Cyberpedant's "Whoever taught you this was absolutely wrong." also applies for UK-EN..

GF..


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## PaulQ

I well remember an English teacher complaining that I pronounced the final 'g'. For me it was my local accent.


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## Loob

lampak said:


> In different text when someone using colloquial language is quoted, the _g _in the _-ing_ ending is often replaced with an apostrophe, so the ending is _-in'_. I guess it means the _g_ wasn't pronounced, the problem is, I've always been taught (like on every other lesson) that the _g_ in _-ing_ is never pronounced. How is then this colloquial pronunciation different from a more formal one?


Hi lampak

The usual pronunciation of -ng is /ŋ/.  Some people pronounce it - in the context of the verb ending '-ing" - as /n/.

The /n/ pronunciation is often represented as _dropping the 'g' _- hence the written form -in'.  But that's not really an accurate phonological representation of what's happening here.


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## Dan2

Loob has it right.

[Iŋ] - standard in US and UK
[Iŋg] - I believe I've heard this more from UK speakers; heard in US as sub-standard
[Ing] - I've never heard it
[In] - extremely common, normally heard as colloquial; would be unusual in a news broadcast or formal talk

(People who haven't studied phonetics often think they are saying [Ing] when in fact they're saying [Iŋ].)


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## lampak

Thanks for quick reply 

As a curiosity, I've searched the net a bit and was surprised to find out we do have this /ŋ/ sound in Polish even if it's not phonetic. Apparently we use it in certain words but we think we're saying a simple /n/ (pity I can't really put it into English "singer" :/). And you think you're saying "ng"? Poor, unloved, unappreciated sound


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## Loob

lampak said:


> Poor, unloved, unappreciated sound


I don't think it's an 'unloved, unappreciated sound' in English, Lampak.  Pretty much everyone knows that the digraph "ng" represents a single sound - even though most people would not be able to translate it into the IPA symbol /ŋ/


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## Dan2

Loob said:


> Pretty much everyone knows that the digraph "ng" represents a single sound


a) That hasn't been my experience.  And as you yourself pointed out, replacing [Iŋ] in the verb ending -ing with [In] is usually referred to as "dropping the g", with many or most people believing that they've dropped a spoken 'g', not just a written one.

b) I know we were talking about final -ing, but note that within words, "ng" usually represents _two_ sounds, as in "anger" or "longer", so as a general statement what you claim that most people know is not even correct.


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## Loob

You're right, Dan, that "ng" can represent /ŋg/. I was talking about the "ng" in the verb ending "ing"" - I'm sorry I wasn't clear.

And you're also right (assuming that this was what you were saying!) that in some varieties of English, even the "ng" in the verb ending "ing" is pronounced as /ŋg/.


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## Alxmrphi

We've mentioned this before and I know from past experience that PaulQ lives in the area where /ŋg/ survives, which also closely represents the speech of the people where I grow up. I know I use both /ŋg/ and /ŋ/ because North West England borders the zone where this pronunciation survives. The vast vast majority of the time I'm an /ŋ/'er. I don't think any normal natives have [ng] .. the phonological rule is that nasals are velarised before velar plosives, and it's such a deep pattern that I think it'd be really really rare for someone (who is a normal native) to not obey this. As Dan2 pointed out, many people who don't understand phonetics/phonology and go by their spelling would argue they say "n" and then "g", but when I talk to these people I just get them to say "tin" and then they realise their tongue is sitting nicely on their alveolar ridge, then I get them to say "bang" and ask them if their tongue is in the same place, and then I ask them to say "bang" but making sure their tongue goes back to the alveolar ridge and then produce the [g] immediately after. That's when they immediately get what is going on and once they do a "ban/bang" [bæn] / [bæŋ] they realise there normally is no [g] and that the nasal has changed (most noticeable by pointing out the positioning of the tongue and whether or not it's on the alveolar ridge).

What people don't usually know about this development is that [ɪn] used to be really really posh and high-class, while the velarised nasal was quite stigmatised (along with the [g] version, too). A hundred years ago all the British royal family and people "who were somebody" would have gone huntin' and killin' foxes. This switch away from that, to a development of how it is for most people today, who then observe [ɪn] in other people's speech immediately assume it's substandard and a colloquial non-standard variant. If they could have gone back 100 years and been in Buckingham Palace listening to the speech of the people portrayed usually as speaking the most 'correct' English (to those people who don't know anything about language/linguistics) - I'd just be interested to see the look on their faces. I remember reading an article about old URP pronunciations and the parallels with AAVE in the black community in the USA, it was a really insightful read because it was so ironic. It's a testimant to how stigma can change and how the prestige we attach to forms can literally in a hundred years change from the King/Queen of England to a poverty-striken ghetto in the U.S.

Our good friend Wiki also makes mention of this:


> It is currently a feature of colloquial and non-standard speech of all regions, and stereotypically of Cockney, Southern American English and African American Vernacular English. Historically, it has also been used by members of the educated upper-class, as reflected by the phrase _huntin’, fishin’ and shootin’_. That this pronunciation was once regarded as standard can also be seen from old rhymes, as for example, in this couplet from John Gay's 1732 pastoral, _Acis and Galatea_, set to music by Handel:
> 
> [..]
> The pronunciation with [ɪŋ] only became standard in the nineteenth century.


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## timtfj

Whether I use /ɪŋg/ or /ɪŋ/ for -ing depends on how quickly I'm speakin*g*. But it also depends what sound follows it---mid-sentence the g is likely to disappear and the/ŋ/ may turn into an ordinary n.

My accent is less strongly local than that of most people in my area though---I think what I normally hear is either /ɪŋg/ or /ɪn/ and only rarely /ɪŋ/ with no g. I haven't tried making transcripts though ;-)


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## Pertinax

I have used /ŋg/ since childhood, although after reading this thread I realize that I switch to /ŋ/ when speaking quickly or enunciating lazily. The residual "g" is no doubt due to the formative influence of Merseyside on my speech patterns.

I find it ironic that people in Liverpool, who are sometimes mocked for their inveterate laziness, should have preserved a form of pronunciation that in this respect seems to require more effort.


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## Alxmrphi

I see that the two posters before me are from my area, and we feel sort of the same way.

Unfortunately, I have to disagree with timtfj in that he never hears /ɪŋ/ in NW England.... It's by default the natural pronunciation. Maybe as someone studying Linguistics who lives in the area, I have been judging my friends and everyone else who lives in my area for more than 3 years and I know most of the people produce [ɪŋ] and [ɪn] in colloquial speech. [ɪn] is so common, but in my everyday experience I can't deny that [ɪŋ] is more prominent. My friends hate me for judging their speech when we are on a night out, but I study dialect words and pronunciations notice these things. Maybe others will disagree and I don't like to resort to the "you've been conditioned to think a certain way", but I can't help but think that when seeing people saying that [ɪŋ] is rarely heard. They really have to resort to a deeper level of analysis rather than "what is thought that is heard". I really don't mean any offence by that but I have a really bad habit of being distracted by diverse usages of English (often in admiration of dialect speech).... I do know what is common and what's not as my family leads me to spend a lot of time ALL OVER the North West. 

So in the nicest way possible I have to disagree with the earlier comment


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## GreenWhiteBlue

Alxmrphi said:


> I am born and bread in Liverpool,


My great-grandfather always adamantly insisted that he was an American. When it would be pointed out that he was born and reared in Dublin, he would retort "if I had been born in an oven, would that make me a loaf of bread?" Apparently the answer to his question could have been "No -- but if you had been born in Liverpool..." 




			
				Dan2 said:
			
		

> [Iŋg] - I believe I've heard this more from UK speakers; heard in US as sub-standard


In New York City, it is (along with such things as an aspirated "p" at the end of a word such "top") regarded as a particularly Jewish (that is, Yiddish-derived) speech pattern.


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## timtfj

Well like I said, I haven't been out and made a point of checking what people use for -ing. This is my impression of it. But I want to point out that I'm not talking about what is generally heard in the north west---I was specifically referring to the *local* accent where I live, which is a very strong working-class Stockport one. (I nearly wrote Manchester, but that's not quite accurate.) The accent even five miles away is noticeably different, so I'm not convinced that observations elsewhere in the north west say much about what happens here. _Going_ _home_ would for example be pronounced _goin' 'ome.

_If I try out the different pronunciations in a sentence like _Where [are] you going_? then /ɪn/ sounds like more or less compulsory local usage which would get you bullied at school if you didn't use it, /ɪŋg/ sounds like someone speaking more carefully and not dropping the g, and /ɪŋ/ sounds like what I often use but is considered posh by local people.

I agree that /ŋ/ is a natural default pronunciation for *ng*, but unless affected by a nearby consonant it's not a natural default pronunciation for *n* on its own. My point is that the local practice---as opposed to mine---is to *replace the ng with n and pronounce the n as /n/*, not to pronounce the ng as /n/. They're actually using a different phoneme, because "it's posh not to drop the *g*". The g is completely gone, not absorbed into /ŋ/. If people do use *ng*, then they're more or less consciously adding the *g* and it comes out as /ŋg/. So they don't tend to use /ŋ/,because *-ing* instead of *-in' *is a careful pronunciation in the first place and therefore carefully pronounced.

Anyway the only way to be really sure of this is for me to check what I'm actually hearing people say next time I'm out. I'll try to remember to do that.


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## Alxmrphi

> If I try out the different pronunciations in a sentence like _Where [are] you going_?  then /ɪn/ sounds like more or less compulsory local usage which would  get you bullied at school if you didn't use it, /ɪŋg/ sounds like  someone speaking more carefully and not dropping the g, and /ɪŋ/ sounds  like what I often use but is considered posh by local people.


Yeah, I would totally agree with that. Maybe there's something different about 'going' or just in such a regular question.


> I agree that /ŋ/ is a natural default pronunciation for *ng*, but unless affected by a nearby consonant it's not a natural default pronunciation for *n* on its own


I didn't think anybody claimed the contrary.
Engma exists specifically as a result of velarised sounds (i.e. historically) and is used in the environment where it was created, then when the [g] dropped out it got phonemic rather than allophonic status in English (or those accents that had g-dropping and used the velar sound.



> Anyway the only way to be really sure of this is for me to check what  I'm actually hearing people say next time I'm out. I'll try to remember  to do that.


Yeah I'm also going to try to notice this when possible, because I do think in the language of younger people in relaxed conversation it might be predominantly with [n] as you said, but as I said before without the [g] and pronouncing engma seems also to be in some free-variation relationship. Food for thought.


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## timtfj

Alxmrphi said:


> Yeah, I would totally agree with that. Maybe there's something different about 'going' or just in such a regular question.
> Yeah I'm also going to try to notice this when possible, because I do think in the language of younger people in relaxed conversation it might be predominantly with [n] as you said, but as I said before without the [g] and pronouncing engma seems also to be in some free-variation relationship. Food for thought.


It'll be interesting. Or intrestin'.

Interesting you mention younger people, because I was actually thinking about the opposite: older people with a very strong class tradition and maybe more connection with the traditional local dialect.


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## dreamlike

Hi everyone,

I thought that English speakers tend to elide the "-g" in the "-ing", regardless of what accent they speak, but it seems otherwise. What triggered my question is one of the posts I read in this thread. 



			
				TaylorP said:
			
		

> The one thing I notice when I think of the Ohio accent is the no-existent "g" in the "-ing" (i.e. Talkin, runnin, callin). I live in central Ohio and no one I know pronounces the "g".




Reading this post, one can get the impression that the Ohio accent is an exception in this regard, and I was certain that the same is true of every single English accent. Let's take "reading", the pronunciation my dictionary gives is; /'ridıŋ no "-g" included. 

Can someone shed some light on this?

<<This thread has been merged with a previous one. Please read from the top.   
Moderator >>


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## LilianaB

Hi, Dreamlike. I am not an expert on the  Ohio accent, but the lack of the final _g_ in the Brooklyn accent I was talking about is different than the pronunciation you are indicating. The _g_ is not pronounced at all, but the _i_ sound is different as well. It is almost a _y_._ I'm tokyn_, kind of.


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## wandle

> Let's take "reading", the pronunciation my dictionary gives is; /'ridıŋ no "-g" included.


If you consult this chart you will see that the symbol at the end of your dictionary pronunciation is for the nasalised letter 'g': that is, pronounced '-ng'.

This final nasal sound is standard in British pronunciation, but you will also hear the plain 'n' sound in local accents.
The standard nasalised pronunciation is the only one recognised as correct (except for quotations of the spoken word, dialogue in plays, etc.).


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## Keith Bradford

There are broadly three ways of pronouncing the -ing.

Standard British is the nasalised g, where the back of your tongue rises as if to pronouce a 'g', but you don't actually sound it. /'sıngıŋ/
In the British Midlands you sound the g ("with her g's ringing like gongs" as one writer put it). /'sıngıng/
In much of the rest of the English-speaking world the g disappears completely in casual speech (though this is only true of present participles: _sing _doesn't get pronounced like _sin_!) A hundred years ago this was an upper-class affectation among those who spent their leisure time huntin', shootin' and fishin'. /'sıngın/


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## LilianaB

Yes, it is a diphthong, ng, definitely, not just a lack of g in the standard British pronunciation - RP. Is the nasalize g considered a diphthong? I always thought it was, but I am not sure anymore.  A diphthong is usually referred to as a two vowel sound.    # 3.


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## dreamlike

Thanks for all your input, Liliana, Keith and Wandle. I took the symbol at the end of my dictionary pronunciation to be mere "n" - had I looked more carefully at it, I would have realised that it's "ŋ" which represents a different sound. Liliana, RP might be considered a standard pronunciation, but to me, it's far from being one - at least in terms of number of people who use it (about 2% of the British population, if my memory serves me well).


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## sound shift

Keith Bradford said:


> In the British Midlands you sound the g ("with her g's ringing like gongs" as one writer put it). /'sıngıng/



Yes. It's a West Midland phenomenon. More precisely, it extends from Lancashire down through Cheshire, Staffordshire, the Black Country and Birmingham. It peters out in Warwickshire. It doesn't occur in Nottingham or Leicester. Derby is on its eastern boundary.


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## dreamlike

Out of sheer curiosity, do you find this pronunciation appealing? Also, how distinct is the "g" sound - does one have to strain his/her ears to hear it, or is it as audible as the "g" in words like "gain", for instance?


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## PaulQ

It reminds me of home...  No, no effort is required to hear it - we like to be helpful to inquisitive linguists, e.g. jumpin(guh)


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## lucas-sp

How does the version with a pronounced "g" sound? Can you give an example of a film character who uses it, or something like that? Sorry, but I can't figure it out.

Is it something like: "You're _making a _big mistake" = "may-ki[ng]-guh" ? (This is how I guess it sounds.)

Does it only happen when the next syllable is a vowel, or does it even show up in things like "I'm studying ("stuh-dee-i[ng]-guh")?


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## jmichaelm

dreamlike said:


> Reading this post, one can get the impression that the Ohio accent is an exception in this regard...



In the Oklahoma hills where I was born, we spent a lot of time walkin' whenever we went huntin'. This pronunciation is not only common, but in some areas of the US it is the dominant pronunciation.


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## George French

dreamlike said:


> Out of sheer curiosity, do you find this pronunciation appealing?



Which one of the many different ones do you mean???

If one says sing and singing, where the 2 ings are pronounced the same way, that sounds best to me. Clipping the g off the final syllable and pronouncing it as *in *hurts my ears. But we all have to bear our own crosses...

GF..

Others may have different opinions.....


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## mplsray

LilianaB said:


> Yes, it is a diphthong, ng, definitely, not just a lack of g in the standard British pronunciation - RP. Is the nasalize g considered a diphthong? I always thought it was, but I am not sure anymore.  A diphthong is usually referred to as a two vowel sound.    # 3.



Tom McArthur, in the article "Digraph" in _The Oxford Companion to the English Language_, calls _ng_ a "consonant digraph," since two consonants represent one consonant sound, /ŋ/. He gives as examples _longer_ and _singer_. It's the example _longer_ which I find a bit curious, since _ng_ in that word actually represents two consonants, /ŋ/ plus /g/.

_Diphthong_ has had many meaning in English, and the confusion seems to have started when some Greek vowels which had historically been true diphthongs continued to be called diphthongs even when the actual sound represented had become a simple vowel. People do occasionally refer to two consonant letters which represent a single consonant to be a diphthong, but I think it's fairly rare, and I can't remember seeing any linguist do so.


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## Keith Bradford

dreamlike said:


> Out of sheer curiosity, do you find this pronunciation appealing? Also, how distinct is the "g" sound - does one have to strain his/her ears to hear it, or is it as audible as the "g" in words like "gain", for instance?



Julie Walters, the Oscar-winning actress who played Billy Elliot's teacher and the mother of the red-headed kids in Harry Potter, has this accent naturally (south Birmingham).  Can't remember if she uses it in the films, though.

But yes, it's very audible unless you live in that area, in which case it's just normal.


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## JulianStuart

I think I recall occasioanlly hearing the full hard g of an -ing suffix from people from Long Island.  They are known for pronouncing their home as Lon Guy-land or perhaps Long Guy-land, with a "full-on" G.  Perhaps other US folks have more experience, or are they out whoopin' and hollerin' ?


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## LilianaB

Thank you, Mplsray. I learned it was a diphthong many years ago and I haven't thought about it until yesterday when I suddenly realized that diphthongs refer usually to vowel sounds in English.


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## dreamlike

George French said:


> Which one of the many different ones do you mean??? If one says sing and singing, where the 2 ings are pronounced the same way, that sounds best to me. Clipping the g off the final syllable and pronouncing it as *in *hurts my ears. But we all have to bear our own crosses...



I meant the one in which you sound the "g", as opposed to eliding it, or nasalising, for that matter. Having given it some thought, leaving out the g doesn't sound particularly good to me, neither - people who do that are likely to use trash words like "ain't" or "gonna", although this might be a sweeping generalization. 

Thanks for all your input again  I think I'd do well to try to nasalize the "g" whenever pronouncing the "-ing".


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## George French

dreamlike said:


> people who do that are likely to use trash words like "ain't" or "gonna", although this might be a sweeping generalization.



Trash is a bit over the top.... Ain't is perfectly usable in some localisation of British English, I use it reasonably often, but gonna is definitely not for me. But 'normal people' do use both of them and that does not make it trash...

If you do not want to use them yourself then, fine.....

GF..


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## natkretep

Keith Bradford said:


> There are broadly three ways of pronouncing the -ing.
> 
> Standard British is the nasalised g, where the back of your tongue rises as if to pronouce a 'g', but you don't actually sound it. /'sıngıŋ/
> In the British Midlands you sound the g ("with her g's ringing like gongs" as one writer put it). /'sıngıng/
> In much of the rest of the English-speaking world the g disappears completely in casual speech (though this is only true of present participles: _sing _doesn't get pronounced like _sin_!) A hundred years ago this was an upper-class affectation among those who spent their leisure time huntin', shootin' and fishin'. /'sıngın/



Keith, presumably you meant /'sıŋıŋ/, /'sıŋgıŋ/ (or did you mean /'sıŋgıŋg/?), /'sıŋın/?

Dreamlike, I think we have to be more accepting of variation in dialects and accents, and I don't think describing a variety as 'trash' is helpful.


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## dreamlike

natkrete said:
			
		

> Dreamlike, I think we have to be more accepting of variation in dialects and accents, and I don't think describing a variety as 'trash' is helpful.



 I don't want to sound impolite, but I don't know what all the fuss is about. I didn't refer to any variety as "trash" - I merely made a point about words like "ain't" and "gonna", which, to my mind, _are_ trash words. I don't expect anyone to share my thinking - but since we are fortunate enough to be living in times of freedom of speech, nor do I expect anyone to criticize me for having a diffirent opinion.

Perhaps, "trash" is too big a word. In my experience, though, people who tend to use these words, or should I say, overuse them, don't attach much importance to the way they speak. Their utterances are often something to the effect of:
_yesterday me and my bf was walkin' down the street when we saw a big dog chasin' after us.. I ain't seen that one comin'! it was all angry and shit.. good thing that my dad showed up cuz if he didn't we would be dead, seriously! i'm gonna remeber this day! 
_(I made it up)


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## Keith Bradford

natkretep said:


> Keith, presumably you meant /'sıŋıŋ/, /'sıŋgıŋ/ (or did you mean /'sıŋgıŋg/?), /'sıŋın/?
> 
> ...



Quod scripsi scripsi.  It's all possible.


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## emanko

Hello

I have always learned that /ng/ is pronounced as /ŋ/ at the end of a morpheme , as in sing or singer in Standard English. 
But recently I started noticing that sometimes I still hear a weak /g/ sound. and I don't think the speakers I heard were using a regional accent; their accent sounded quite Standard. 
Is it possible that sometimes native speakers may release the /g/ sound inadvertently? 

The way I think about it is that the /g/ sound is made by the back of the tongue touching the soft palate, which is the same position of the nasal / ŋ / , so to make the / ŋ / the tongue is raised  and the air goes through the nose. Then the tongue is   released, so I guess it's not unlikely that when the speaker is releasing the tongue, some air might escape the mouth and eventually produce an unintended weak /g/.

I don't know if my analysis sounds plausible to you, but I would be really grateful if you monitor your own pronunciation and see if this really happens.

Thank you


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## entangledbank

To make a nasal sound the velum is lowered to open the nasal cavity to the air flow. The tongue position is the same for [g] and [ŋ]. But yes, if you retract the velum earlier than releasing the tongue, you would get [ŋg]. However, for the same reason you could hear [d] at the end of 'when' or [b ] at the end of 'come'. I have never heard any of these, except in the specifically regional accents that have final /ŋg/.


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## emanko

entangledbank said:


> To make a nasal sound the velum is lowered to open the nasal cavity to the air flow. The tongue position is the same for [g] and [ŋ]. But yes, if you retract the velum earlier than releasing the tongue, you would get [ŋg]. However, for the same reason you could hear [d] at the end of 'when' or [b ] at the end of 'come'. I have never heard any of these, except in the specifically regional accents that have final /ŋg/.



Thank you. 
Your reply makes a lot of sense. But I could have sworn I heard a weak /g/ several times. 
Is there any explanation for this?


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## dojibear

emanko said:


> But I could have sworn I heard a weak /g/ several times.
> Is there any explanation for this?


Please give us an example of what you heard. We can't guess, and you are wrong to imagine "all situations are identical".


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## emanko

dojibear said:


> Please give us an example of what you heard. We can't guess, and you are wrong to imagine "all situations are identical".



I heard examples like "singging" or "makinggg" , but the /g/ was weak.


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## dojibear

Was the word "making" followed by a vowel sound? What vowel?
Was the word "making" followed by a consonant sound? What consonant?
Was the word "making" at the end of a sentence (followed by no sound)?

Those are different situations, when we are considering "hearing the g".


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## emanko

dojibear said:


> Was the word "making" followed by a vowel sound? What vowel?
> Was the word "making" followed by a consonant sound? What consonant?
> Was the word "making" at the end of a sentence (followed by no sound)?
> 
> Those are different situations, when we are considering "hearing the g".



Thank you.
I don't really remember the exact examples, but God willing, I will keep closer attention to try to find accurate examples. 
However, let's assume that we have the three cases:

1- making of (Vowel)
2- making the (consonant)
3- making (final sound)


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## Loob

Emanko, what you've heard, by the sound of it, is a speaker of a regional variety for whom it is natural to pronounce the '-ing' ending as /ɪŋg/.
Where did the speaker or speakers come from?


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## Uncle Jack

emanko said:


> Is it possible that sometimes native speakers may release the /g/ sound inadvertently?


For many BrE speakers, making a hard 'g' sound falls within the range of ordinary pronunciation, to some extent at any rate. Ordinarily, I pronounce "ing" as  /ɪŋ/, so "singing" is  /'sɪŋɪŋ/, but if I am placing particular stress on the word, it might come out as /'sɪŋ.gɪŋ/, where the second syllable picks up a "g" sound at the beginning. Entangledbank explains this phenomenon in post #42, although I think it is more common than he says it is. This sound is only likely before a vowel.

The routine pronunciation of  "ing" as  /ɪŋg/ in all situations by certain speakers is relatively rare, and even within areas where it is found, it is far from universal. Even then, it does not appear to carry across to all "ng" words; I have never heard "kung fu", for example, pronounced with a /ŋg/ sound.


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## emanko

Thank you, Uncle Jack.



Uncle Jack said:


> This sound is only likely before a vowel.



By "this sound", do you mean / ŋg /? So if  ŋg  comes before a vowel, a /g/ could be released?


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## Uncle Jack

emanko said:


> By "this sound", do you mean / ŋg /? So if ŋg comes before a vowel, a /g/ could be released?


With speakers for whom /ŋ/ is  the usual pronunciation of "ng", an /ŋg/ sound might be produced when they place particular stress on the "ng" word, and when the "ng" comes before a vowel.


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## kentix

Uncle Jack said:


> sound *might* be produced


I have no problem producing any of those words, even with hard stress, without a g sound. So it's not a necessary consequence of any of those conditions, although it might occur.


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