This post will focus on pronunciation in the standard southern British English accent, which is a variant of what's known as RP, or received pronunciation. It's the accent that you'll see transcribed in the Oxford or Cambridge dictionaries.
Today, you'll learn about how to pronounce NG in this British accent.
Here's a video explaining everything, or just keep reading below.
How To Pronounce NG At The End Of A Word
The first important thing is to know what speakers of this accent do with their tongue.
The back of the tongue is raised touching the soft palate.
This means that there is no hard G when the NG is at the end of a word. Play the video above to hear this.
How To Pronounce NG In 'ing' Suffixes
The good news is that it is exactly the same as above: the back of the tongue touches the soft palate so there is no hard G at the end.
BEWARE! Speakers of some other accents in the UK pronounce an N instead of an NG at the end of 'ing' suffixes. This means the tip of the tongue is coming up in the front of the mouth instead of the back of the tongue, like this:
Play the video above to hear this.
To avoid this, rhyme the way you pronounce an NG at the end of a root word like 'king' in words like 'asking', 'ranking', 'soaking'.
How To Pronounce NG In The Middle Of Words
Most of the time, when an NG is in the middle of a word, the NG is pronounced as described above but the G is pronounced as a G, in words like 'finger', 'anger', 'angle'. Play the video to hear this.
However, there are a handful of words when this doesn't happen and the NG is pronounced without the hard G.
If you have a root word (a word where you can't take anything away from the word without it changing the meaning) like 'hang' or 'song' and it is extended with a suffix that starts with a vowel sound, like 'ing' or 'er' the G is not pronounced as a hard G. This happens in words like 'singer' and 'banging'. Play the video the hear this.
Here is a list of the majority of words like this:
singer winger dead-ringer clinger-on ringing banging swinging
bringing ringing singing pinging flinging winging wringing hanging
Phonetic Symbol
The NG sound is written phonetically as /ŋ/.
How To Do A British Accent Course - free
Before I share with you some sentences that you can practice with, it's just worth knowing that I have a free course on the standard southern British English accent.
Here are some practice sentence:
I’ve been asking Andrew to clarify the emailing and filing policies for months.
Wearing Lycra and dancing madly is not something I feel comfortable doing in public!
We walked along the river in Kettering on Sunday and it was snowing like mad.
They rang every hour yesterday – I’m going crazy! It’s alarming! It’s infuriating!
I also have a comprehensive eBook with 12 hrs of audio, that covers this and every aspect of pronunciation and intonation in a Standard Southern British English accent.
Written by...
Ashley Howard MA, a UK voice coach with 18+ years experience, can help you speak the way you've always wanted to speak.
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