Hadar Shemesh teaches how to pronounce the NG sound in American English. The episode covers tongue placement, nasal airflow, and how to avoid adding a final G pop. Practice with minimal pairs like sin vs. sing and ran vs. rang.
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Welcome to the Influency Podcast. I'm Hadar, and this is your how to Pronounce Friday. And today we are going to focus on one of the sounds in American English. I'm going to teach you how to pronounce it, and then we'll practice it together. Are you ready? Warm up your tongue, because this is going to be fun. Let's get started. Today we're going to talk about the NG consonant sound. What was that? Let's try it again. Yes, it's a sound that is usually represented with the consonant letters N and g. So a word like sing is not sing. There is no n and then a G sound. Sing. No, it is one consonant that is produced in the back of the mouth. Sing Sing long playing okay, so how do you make this sound? Basically, the NG is a combination of the N sound. So it has that nasal quality because the air is coming out through the nose, but it has the placement of a G sound because the back of the tongue goes up and blocks the air in the back while touching the soft palate. G, N. So to make the sound, the tongue goes up in the back, blocks the air, then you release the air through the nasal passages, and the air comes out through the nose. So when you open your mouth, you can see that the tongue is totally down. Another way to think about it is try to make an N while keeping the tip of the tongue down. What you're going to do is probably compensate for the fact that you can bring the tip of the tongue up. So you're going to bring the back of the tongue up. Sing. Wrong. Now, again, because of the representation of the gift in the spelling, a lot of people pop the G sound at the end of the word. Longing. Singing. When in fact, these are all NG consonants. Singing longing and ping. Now, what's the best way to practice it? First of all, practice making the sound. All right, so great, you got the sound right. Then practice it in typical positions where you're more likely to produce it with a G sound. Sing Sing. Writing. Not right writing. So you want to stretch and hold out the NG sound and then fade it out nicely until you don't hear any more sounds. Don't pop a G at the end. Riding and long. And step number three is to use it in minimal pairs. So compare words that end with an N to words that end with an Ng. Sin vs sing, ran vs rang, lawn vs long. All right, good job. Okay. That was your how to Pronounce Friday episode. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you like, the podcast, then consider subscribing to the podcast. And if you feel really crazy, you can even rate and review the podcast. And you can find me at Hadar Accentsway on Instagram where you can DM me and ask for all the crazy, fancy, confusing words that you'd like to know know how to pronounce. Have a beautiful day and I'll see you next time.
