# [ŋ] sound and the ways of spelling it



## ManOfWords

About the sound of [ŋ] ... using "ng" to spell it in English is just a convention (since there is no g sound in that consonant), I wonder if it has always been that convention or if it used to have another way of spelling the [ŋ] sound in the past.


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## Stoggler

ManOfWords said:


> About the sound of [ŋ] ... using "ng" to spell it in English is just a convention (since there is no g sound in that consonant), I wonder if it has always been that convention or if it used to have another way of spelling the [ŋ] sound in the past.



That convention is the result of there being a /g/ sound for most of the history of the English language - /ŋɡ/ was how it was spoken (and still is in parts of Britain today).

Phonological history of English consonant clusters - Wikipedia


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## ManOfWords

Thanks.


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## fdb

On the other hand, /ŋ/ is represented by <ng> in German, also in Vietnamese, Malay/Indonesian, Tagalog, Chinese pinyin, and many others, where it does not involve any /g/.


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## exgerman

fdb said:


> On the other hand, /ŋ/ is represented by <ng> in German, also in Vietnamese, Malay/Indonesian, Tagalog, Chinese pinyin, and many others, where it does not involve any /g/.


The convention was borrowed from Latin spelling, along with the alphabet itself.


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## fdb

But there is no <ng> digraph in Latin.


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## Red Arrow

fdb said:


> On the other hand, /ŋ/ is represented by <ng> in German, also in Vietnamese, Malay/Indonesian, Tagalog, Chinese pinyin, and many others, where it does not involve any /g/.


German and Dutch ng used to be pronounced [ŋg], too.

The Asian languages borrowed this spelling from the Germanic ones, obviously.


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## fdb

Red Arrow :D said:


> The Asian languages borrowed this spelling from the Germanic ones, obviously.



Not as obvious as it might seem. Vietnamese orthography was invented in the 17th century, on the basis of Portuguese. There is no Portuguese precedent for <ng> for /ŋ/.


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## Red Arrow

ng is a voiced velar nasal. Portuguese has got two nasals (n and m) and only one voiced velar (g), so they could have written it as 'mg', 'ng', 'gn' and 'gm'.

ng looks more like n than like m since you don't use your lips, so we can scrap mg and gm. Apparantly 'ng' was considered a better spelling than 'gn'. (probably because of French and Italian gn)

I also find it hard to believe that none of the Portuguese linguists back then knew something about Dutch, English or German.


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## Delvo

It had its own separate rune.


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## Testing1234567

fdb said:


> Not as obvious as it might seem. Vietnamese orthography was invented in the 17th century, on the basis of Portuguese. There is no Portuguese precedent for <ng> for /ŋ/.


Nor is there any Portuguese precendent for spelling /g/ before /i/ and /e/ as "gh", but it happened in the orthography anyway. According to Wikipedia, this is based on Italian, so I see no problem with having "ng" based on English/German.


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## Testing1234567

fdb said:


> But there is no <ng> digraph in Latin.


/ɡ/ assimilated to a velar nasal [ŋ] before /n/, so "rēgnum" was pronounced [ˈreːŋ.nũː].


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## Dymn

As far as I know, most languages have [ŋ] as an allophone of /n/ before velar consonants. Since /ŋ/ usually appears in codas (in English, Dutch, German, Mandarin, Korean, etc.) it makes sense that the spelling may follow the sonority sequencing principle and prefer <ng> (nasal+stop) over <gn> (stop+nasal). It isn't the case of Vietnamese apparently, but still it is a sound that is mostly associated with codas. I'd also say <ng> is more likely than <nk> because of its voicedness.

If we take a look at Wikipedia's list of occurrences of the velar nasal, it seems most languages either have <ng>, or <n> allophonically, or a separate letter (e.g. <ŋ> in African languages, <ң> in Central Asian languages). Apparently in Korean grammar ㅇ, the "letter" for /ŋ/, is classified along with /h/.


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## berndf

fdb said:


> But there is no <ng> digraph in Latin.





Testing1234567 said:


> /ɡ/ assimilated to a velar nasal [ŋ] before /n/, so "rēgnum" was pronounced [ˈreːŋ.nũː].


I don't understand how this would be a response to what fdb said. There is no <ng> digraph in _rēgnum_.


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## Testing1234567

berndf said:


> I don't understand how this would be a response to what fdb said. There is no <ng> digraph in _rēgnum_.


Oops, I thought he meant there is no "ng" sound in Latin.


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## Sardokan1.0

Testing1234567 said:


> /ɡ/ assimilated to a velar nasal [ŋ] before /n/, so "rēgnum" was pronounced [ˈreːŋ.nũː].



That would be the Church pronounce, the Classical pronounce would be something like "reg - noom", with the G and N pronounced separatedly, same for words like "magnus" etc.etc.

listen here :





An hint of this pronounce can be found in Sardinian, where the GN didn't evolve in [ŋ] like in Italian, but in a double NN :

regnus -> rennu
magnus -> mannu
signum -> sinnu


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## berndf

Sardokan1.0 said:


> ..the Classical pronounce would be something like "reg - noom"


I don't know what makes you so sure about this. I have learned <gn>=[ŋn] for classical Latin as well and I haven't seen any serious academic source denying it.


Sardokan1.0 said:


> listen here :


I am not sure what how a Swede pronounces a common name has to do with this.


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## Testing1234567

Sardokan1.0 said:


> That would be the Church pronounce, the Classical pronounce would be something like "reg - noom", with the G and N pronounced separatedly, same for words like "magnus" etc.etc.



You've confused the two. /ɡn/ is the Church pronunciation. /ŋn/ is the Classical Latin pronunciation.



Sardokan1.0 said:


> An hint of this pronounce can be found in Sardinian, where the GN didn't evolve in [ŋ] like in Italian, but in a double NN :
> 
> regnus -> rennu
> magnus -> mannu
> signum -> sinnu



Looks more like a hint of /ŋn/ rather than /ɡn/. How did the /ɡ/ suddenly become /n/?


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## berndf

Testing1234567 said:


> /ɡn/ is the Church pronunciation.


Church pronunciation is as in Italian, i.e. <gn>=[ɲ].


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## Testing1234567

berndf said:


> Church pronunciation is as in Italian, i.e. <gn>=[ɲ].


I guess you're right. What is /ɡn/ then? Anglicized?


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## berndf

Testing1234567 said:


> I guess you're right. What is /ɡn/ then? Anglicized?


Spelling pronunciation?


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## marrish

berndf said:


> Church pronunciation is as in Italian, i.e. <gn>=[ɲ].


Exactly, as is in other Romance languages. The 'n' in GN is [*ɲ*] while in NG it's [*ŋ*]. However, in Latin I can see from the previous posts that NG was [ŋn].


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## Sardokan1.0

Testing1234567 said:


> You've confused the two. /ɡn/ is the Church pronunciation. /ŋn/ is the Classical Latin pronunciation.
> 
> 
> 
> Looks more like a hint of /ŋn/ rather than /ɡn/. How did the /ɡ/ suddenly become /n/?



Try to pronounce mag-nus very quickly many times, you'll end up pronouncing something like mannus


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## berndf

Sardokan1.0 said:


> Try to pronounce mag-nus very quickly many times, you'll end up pronouncing something like mannus


Try to pronounce _mang-nus_ very quickly many times, you'll end up pronouncing something like _mannus _as well.

[ŋn] > [nn] is even more plausible then [gn] > [nn]. I can't see how you can make this a point for <gn> = [nn] rather then [ŋn].


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## Testing1234567

fdb said:


> But there is no <ng> digraph in Latin.


Except in *angelus*, *angustia* (> English *anguish*), *cingō* (> French *ceindre*), *iungō* (> English *join*), *lingō*, *lingua* (> French *langue*), *longus* (> French *long*), *pingō* (> English *paint*), *stringō* (> English *strain*), and *tingō* (> French *teindre*), etc.


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## fdb

Testing1234567 said:


> Except in *angelus*, *angustia* (> English *anguish*), *cingō* (> French *ceindre*), *iungō* (> English *join*), *lingō*, *lingua* (> French *langue*), *longus* (> French *long*), *pingō* (> English *paint*), *stringō* (> English *strain*), and *tingō* (> French *teindre*), etc.



Please see no. 14. Latin "ng" is not a digraph.


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## Testing1234567

no. 14 was about "gn", but never mind, it isn't a digraph anyway.


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## Red Arrow

Does anyone know why *ng* is always long in Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Estonian?

I wonder how they would have spelled the short version. Finnish could write short g and long ng. Or short ng and long nng.


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## ManOfWords

Thanks all.


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