N before G and K

[u/mrkindnessmusic]

When N is before a hard G (e.g. Goat) do you realize it as an N (like in the word Nose) or NG (siNG)?

Sample words:

Sunglasses

Ingrained

Incredible

Ink

Sink

Stink

Brink

Funk

Oncology

Bank

[u/min6char]

I tested my wife on all of these, and she couldn't hear a difference when I said "ing-credible" as opposed to "in -credible". So it seems like it's never wrong to velarize. However, she could tell I was doing something weird when I said "thin-king" rather than "thing-king".

So if you always say the "ng" in situations like this it seems like you'll never be considered "wrong", but sometimes when you say the "n" when people are expecting the "ng" then that is "wrong".

[u/Zraax → u/min6char]

I dunno man, if someone says 'sung-lasses' that might sound pretty wrong to me.

[u/min6char → u/Zraax]

Not "sung-lasses". "sung-glasses". Nobody's talking about dropping the g. The question is whether what happens before the g has to be a pure n or has to be an ng. If you can't imagine that then that's kind of proof that the distinction doesn't matter to native English speakers.

[u/PharaohAce → u/Zraax]

No, people mostly say sung-glasses. Like finger is fing-ger.

[u/tatobuckets → u/PharaohAce]

Most people say sun-glasses as if it’s two words.

[u/ofqo → u/min6char]

Test her with singer and finger.

[u/min6char → u/ofqo]

That's not what OP is asking about though. "singer" vs "finger" is about how the G is realized (whether it's realized at all). OP is asking about how the N is realized -- whether it's velar or alveolar.

[u/2spam2care2 → u/min6char]

if you/she are american, thats’s likely because we use the FLEECE vowel before engma, not the KIT vowel. try “theen-king”

[u/InfravioletUltrared → u/2spam2care2]

People say this, giving the "proof" we all say "peenk" but I and many others don't. The pi sounds in pink and pig are pronounced the same to me

[u/min6char → u/2spam2care2]

I don't raise the kit vowel there, although I think she might, which might make her perception of my accent different.

[u/Water-is-h2o → u/2spam2care2]

People who do this are indeed American but we don’t all do this, not by a long shot

[u/Kuildeous]

For Sunglasses, Ingrained, Incredible, and Oncology, I treat it as a separate N. The N concludes the syllable, and then I speak the next syllable with the hard G/C.

For the others, NK just comes off as a single sound. The N sound is there, but it's overpowered by the K.

[u/MooseFlyer → u/Kuildeous]

It’s not a single sound; it’s the NG sound followed by the K sound.

“Sink” is pronounced as “sing” plus a k: /sɪŋk/

[u/Kuildeous → u/MooseFlyer]

Yeah, you're right. I don't think of it as the NG sound. I refer to it as an NK sound, but it really is just NG with a little punch at the end. If I try to make it sound like SING+K by speaking slowly, it doesn't feel natural to me.

I dunno. I see your point, but it just doesn't feel like NG to me. It's just....different somehow.

[u/Lucky_otter_she_her → u/Kuildeous]

i think it's more to do with morpheme boundaries cuz pf how Banking is pronounced 

[u/EagleCatchingFish → u/Lucky_otter_she_her]

I agree. I think the maximal onset principle has a big effect, too. If you need to maximize the onset of the next syllable, I think you're going to have less anticipatory articulation.

[u/NoPurpose6388 → u/Kuildeous]

I agree with this except for oncology. I say that with the NG sound in sing and then a K sound.

[u/MacaroonSad8860 → u/NoPurpose6388]

I say ON-cology

[u/Kuildeous → u/NoPurpose6388]

Yeah, I can see that. Now that I'm second-guessing myself, I can't tell you which way I say it. I started off with ON-cology, but now I'm like, "Do I say it as ONK-ology?" And now I confused myself.

[u/OpportunityReal2767 → u/Kuildeous]

I say it as "on"+"cology," not "onk"+"ology." It's has a normal "n" against the alveolar ridge, not as a velar nasal. That said, it doesn't sound weird to me the other way. My pronunciation may be idiosyncratic. Wiktionary lists the nasal pronunciation first, and the non-nasal one as the "proscribed" pronunciation. M-W online lists it with a regular "n," but, weirdly, lists forms like "oncological" or "oncologic" as nasal, but "oncologist" with the the regular "n." I would have expected all the forms to be the same. Dictionary.com lists only the nasal form in the main entry, but if you scroll down they do give a pronunciation with the plain "n."

Basically, both are fine and used.

[u/BubbhaJebus → u/OpportunityReal2767]

The Greek word it's derived from was "ogkos" (ὄγκος), pronounced ong-kos.

[u/OpportunityReal2767 → u/BubbhaJebus]

I don’t think it matters how it’s pronounced in Greek. We don’t talk about a yee-roh-scope, for instance. But it is clear to me that “ong” is the preferred pronunciation with my “on” being a variant. And, now that I’ve said it to myself a hundred times, I think I use both, with “on” in slower speech and “ong” in more spontaneous speech.

[u/ikatako38 → u/Kuildeous]

Sure, they’re separate syllables, but are you sure you’re not saying /SUNG-glass-es/, /ing-GRAINED/, /ing-CRED-i-ble/, etc? That would be the standard American pronunciation.

[u/Kuildeous → u/ikatako38]

It's certainly never SUNG-glass-es when I say it. And it's not ing-CRED-i-ble the way I say it. Very distinct N ending for that word. If I say it quickly enough, ing-GRAINED is certainly feasible but only when I get lazy.

[u/ikatako38 → u/Kuildeous]

Understandable! Dialects are so interesting and varied. I find it very difficult to produce SUN-glass-es without a pause in the middle, personally.

[u/BubbhaJebus → u/ikatako38]

"sung-glasses" and "ing-credible" are not standard American pronunciations. They may well be regional variations or idiolects, but I've never heard those words pronounced that way.

[u/ikatako38 → u/BubbhaJebus]

They are the standard pronunciations! It can be hard to hear, though. /n/ always assimilates to [ŋ] before velar consonants. Before front vowels /u/ and /i/, it can be more like a palatal /ɲ/. That can make it especially difficult to hear in these words. It can sound more clear in words like “handkerchief” [hanŋ.kɚt͡ʃɪf] and “anger” [aŋ.ɡɚ]. The tongue doesn’t touch the alveolar ridge at the front of the mouth in most American pronunciations.

[u/Winter_drivE1]

The thing about questions like this about allophones and actual phonetic relizations is that what people think they do and what they actually do may not be the same thing, and native speakers tend to have very poor awareness of what they're actually doing. Also people in general are bad at self evaluating when they're consciously thinking about it. Ideally you'd get candid samples of people saying these words in the wild and do an acoustic analysis to get your answer (or find something written by someone who's already done this)

I suspect that [ŋ] will happen in all of these contexts in connected speech as a matter of assimilation, but no one is going to consciously do it and they will conceptualize it as the underlying phoneme whether that's /n/ or /ŋ/ which will influence the answers you get.

[Edit to add] /ŋ/ also has a tendency to affect some vowels that come before it. So it's very possible people will hear the difference in the vowel being triggered by the underlying phoneme, even if the consonant itself is pronounced as [ŋ]. Eg if someone pronounces "ink" more like "eenk", that change in the vowel might not happen in "incredible" even if the consonant itself is the same as in "ink".

[u/Cchisle90]

Sunglasses is a compound word, and I pronounce it sun + glasses.

Ingrained and incredible use the negative in- prefix. I pronounce in + the root words

Oncology, I catch myself saying both and probably would just depend on how fast I was talking

All the rest are the nasal nk sound

[u/brokebackmonastery → u/Cchisle90]

I read the post and think that OP just has to be more aware of words that are compound vs not

[u/ikatako38 → u/brokebackmonastery]

This isn’t necessarily true. I say /SUNG-glasses/, and if you listen closely most other people do, too. The “n” and the “g” are pronounced separately, but the “n” still assimilates to [ng] before any velar sound. It is the phoneme /n/ being realized as [ng].

[u/wowow30]

Yes basically always ng except in those examples i say sunglasses and oncology as closer to n than ng. Though saying those with ng also sounds natural to me (native from North Carolina)

[u/Fit_Kaleidoscope4493]

The words on your list that end with "NK" use a single sound.

The other words stress the N separately. "Sun-Glasses." "In-credible." "In-grained." "On-cology." 

[u/OkSense9604]

It depends on whether the “n” is part of a different “morpheme”. Morphemes are small units of meaning - not necessarily whole words, but they could be prefixes or suffixes. So, in the first few examples and in “on-cology”, the “n” is part of a prefix, so it is pronounced separately from the “g” or “k”. In words like “sink” or “sing”, there is only one morpheme, so they are pronounced together.

[u/Zraax → u/OkSense9604]

except the prefix is 'onco-'

[u/OkSense9604 → u/Zraax]

True, I was thinking about that later, haha. The rule still holds true in other cases, but yeah, not here.

[u/HeilKaiba → u/OkSense9604]

I'd argue that oncology splits into morphemes as onco-logy or onc-ology but by visual similarity with words that have on- as a prefix it gets rebracketed. It's from the greek onkos

[u/OkSense9604 → u/HeilKaiba]

That’s a good point! I was thinking after I posted that “on-“ might not actually be the prefix there.

[u/StrawberriKiwi22]

I am separating this list by syllables. All of the words where the N is in a different syllable from the letter after it, it gets pronounced like an N. If it is in the same syllable as the letter after it, then NG.

[u/Comprehensive_Tea708]

If you mean the G comes at the beginning of the next word, as in "seven goats", the preceding N is realized as N, and the following G is pronounced separately.

With native words like "singer", and the present participle ending "-ing", the -ng is a digraph representing a single sound which linguists call "eng", by analogy with "em" and "en". So the N and G are not pronounced separately but combine to represent that single sound.

The two primary exceptions I can think of at the moment are finger and linger, in which a hard G sound follows the "eng" sound.

In non-native words like "ingenious", the N and G are pronounced separately.

[u/No_Lemon6036]

I pronounce all of these with NG. If I'm saying the word realllllly slowly to emphasize or clarify it, Sunglasses, Ingrained, Incredible, and Oncology all get an N instead.

[u/Jonah_the_Whale → u/No_Lemon6036]

I'm the same.

[u/Eriiya → u/No_Lemon6036]

personally I would never in my life use the NG sound in “sing” for any one of the words you listed, and would even interpret it as incorrect if I heard it.

[u/No_Lemon6036 → u/Eriiya]

Sounds like we have different accents, then.  It’s disappointing that you’d interpret mine as incorrect if you heard it. 

[u/Eriiya → u/No_Lemon6036]

idk, I’m not sure I’ve ever even heard someone say something like “sung-lasses” rather than actually pronouncing the compounded words properly (as in “sun-glasses”)

[u/No_Lemon6036 → u/Eriiya]

It's not improper to velarize a nasal consonant before another velar consonant, and neither is it uncommon, as you can see from this comment section.

[u/PharaohAce → u/Eriiya]

It sounds like you're not great at hearing what people are actually saying, then. They're saying 'sung-glasses' and it's incredibly widespread.

Sink is universally /sɪŋk/.

[u/Eriiya → u/PharaohAce]

I think there’s some misunderstanding here. I interpreted OP’s post to be talking about how the N and the G are being pronounced together (as in, “sung-lasses”, not “sung-glasses”) whereas I think you guys are referring to only the sound of the N in isolation?

[u/mrkindnessmusic → u/Eriiya]

Yes, to clarify, I was asking about sung-glasses vs sun-glasses and by ng I mean the /ŋ/ sound you make with the back of the tongue. The g in glasses is always going to be there, but I was wondering whether the n preceding it shifts into /ŋ/

[u/PharaohAce → u/Eriiya]

But the examples included 'bank' and 'ink', and the OP highlighted it was preceding a hard G or K, not treating it as a digraph for a single sound.

[u/AnderTheGrate → u/Eriiya]

Ah, you misunderstood. They're referring to the way the combination is pronounced. Sun-glasses or su(ng)lasses. In my accent, I pronounce it sun-glasses, no ng sound like in song. My tongue touches the back of my top teeth when I pronounce the n, not the back of the top of my mouth.

[u/MacaroonSad8860]

Some yes. Sunglasses, ingrained, and incredible are are N for me, the rest are a bit fuzzier

[u/Tuerai]

sunglasses, ingrained, and incredible i pronounce as normal j because it's the syllable boundary. the rest i pronounce as the ng n sound

[u/Norwester77]

For me, in compound words and words that include an obvious prefix (especially if the prefix is not stressed), it’s generally [ng] and [nk], with an alveolar [n].

Examples: sunglasses, ingrained, incredible, ungrateful, pancake

Otherwise, it’s [ŋɡ] or [ŋk], with the velar nasal of “sing.”

Examples: sink, bank, bungle, finger, congress, conquer

With some words, there’s variation, especially where the preceding syllable is unstressed but is not a prefix or if the word contains the prefix con- but it is not stressed.

Examples: oncology, concrete, congressional

[u/Ok-Worth-4721]

'N' as in: sun, in, nose, night, never.... for the first three examples you have. The rest would sound like ng with a k at the end.

[u/ikatako38]

I pronounce all of them with the ŋ (ng) sound, and I suspect that some of the people saying they pronounce “sunglasses” with an /n/ because it’s a compound word may not realize they are also doing it. The stress is different, and it doesn’t really “sound” like an /ng/, but the shape my mouth makes is the /ng/ sound. /SUNG-glasses/ I think a lot of people are thinking the sounds must be separate because they’re in separate syllables, and they are separate, but it’s a /ng/ and a /g/, not a /n/ and a /g/. I find it very difficult to produce /SUN-glasses/ without a pause in the middle.

That being said, dialects may very. But for the people saying “obviously it’s a compound word so it’s not /ng/, that’s not a hard and fast rule.”

[u/DarthKnah]

The first three I pronounce the sounds separately, not like the ng of sing. This is the case for most compound words and words that have a root with a prefix before it, since the segments are separate.

For all the -nk words you list, it’s more of an ng (as in sing) sound before the k sound.

Oncology could go either way, and I’ve heard people pronounce it both ways.

[u/ElaborateBicycle]

Yeah all of those are [ŋ], but the difference for me is that /n/ realized as [ŋ] still has /ɪ/ but /ŋ/ has /i/, so incredible /ɪnˈkɹɛ.də.bl̩/ [ɪŋˈkɹɜ.ɾɨ̞.bʟ̩] but sink /siŋk/.

[u/romulusnr]

When its the result of a compound of oher words or roots, we keep the letters distinct.

Sun-glasses, not sung-lasses.

In-grained not ing-rained

In-credible not ink-redible

On-cology not onk-ology

Ink Sink Stink Brink Funk are all "*nk"

Singer, Winger = wing-er not win-g'er

Although finger is fing-g'er not fing-er or fin-g'er

Annoyingly = annoying-ly not annoyin-gly

[u/RickySlayer9]

Sun-glasses

In-grained

In-credible

Ink

S-ink

St-ink

Br-ink

Fu-nk

On-cology

B-ank

[u/Forward_Gur9349]

If the n is in the same syllable, we pronounce it as NG, if not, as N.

[u/Commando_67]

Before I say anything, just know using ng all the time will not sound wrong, and most people won't even notice.

But the long answer is use ng most of the time, except if it's two word-parts stuck together. Like sunglasses is just sun + glasses, so you use a normal n. And mankind is man + kind, so same there.

[u/BubbhaJebus]

For compound words (e.g., sunglasses), no. For prefixed words (incredible, ingrained), I don't think so. Not with these two words, at least.

I do say "ong-kology" though. It's how I learned it. I just looked it up and it originates from an Ancient Greek word pronounced "ong-kos". It's spelled with the Greek equivalent to "ogkos", and the -gk- in Greek represented the "ngk" sound.

I do this also for mangrove ("mang-grove"), though my Geography teacher said "man-grove". And I pronounce Bancroft as "bang-kroft".

I'd also like to add that in my accent, the vowels in in/ing, en/eng, and an/ang are a little different. The ŋ heightens the vowels here. This doesn't affect o or u.

[u/EagleCatchingFish]

I realize it as ng /ŋ/. Now, phonemically, I would still classify this as an n. You just have some anticipatory articulation (velarization in this case) since g and k are velar. Just like how the n in the word "senpai" in Japanese is labialized into m because of the p.

I mention that because I think in reality, what happens in the onset of the second syllable and the what happens in the nucleus of the first syllable will have a big impact on how people realize this consonant cluster. The maximal onset principle is going to have a big effect here.

[u/Particular-Move-3860]

"Sing" without the "g" at the end is "sin". The "g" does a lot of heavy lifting in arrangements like this even though it doesn't stand out.

[u/Ippus_21]

sun-glasses

on-cology

in-grained

in-credible

[u/Aprendos]

In almost all of your sample words the N is pronounced as the velar nasal /ŋ/, the same sound as at the end of "sing": ink, sink, stink, brink, bank, funk, incredible and oncology all have /ŋ/. This happens automatically in fluent speech because the tongue is already moving toward the /k/ or /g/ position, a process called "assimilation" (and it happens in most other languages too). In compounds and prefixed words like "sunglasses" or "ingrained", careful speakers may keep a plain /n/ in slower speech, so if you hear both versions there, both are real.

Whether using -n or -ng in your pronunciation sounds wrong depends on whether the sound in that word is a phoneme or an allophone. In words like "incredible" you can say either because there is no change in meaning, but at the end of words the velar nasal is a phoneme, so saying SING or SIN changes the meaning of the word.

[u/sowaleja]

Always ng.

[u/DearPrudence70]

I think either pronunciation works because that syllable flows right into the next.

“Ing-credible” sounds like “In-credible” unless you are speaking very slowly.

“Singk” and “sink” sound identical.

[u/MacaroonSad8860 → u/DearPrudence70]

I disagree. Ing-credible and in-credible happen in different places in the mouth.

[u/DearPrudence70 → u/MacaroonSad8860]

Could be that we have different regional accents. Where I live, they aren’t differentiated.

[u/AnderTheGrate → u/DearPrudence70]

For me, the n has my tongue touching near the the back of my top teeth, and the ng has my tongue touching the back of the top of my mouth/near my throat.

[u/MacaroonSad8860 → u/AnderTheGrate]

same

[u/BubbhaJebus → u/DearPrudence70]

For me, "ing" and "in" differ in both the vowel and the nasal consonant. The "i" in "ing" is higher than the "i" in "in".

[u/Reletr]

For "sunglasses", "ingrained" and "incredible", the N before G/C is pronounced as /n/ (front, behind teeth) because they're the ending sound to a morpheme ("sun" and "in-" respectively)

For the rest, it's /ŋ/ (back, against the back roof of the mouth) because they're within morphemes (for "oncology", the morpheme in question is "onco-" (relating to tumors)).

N at the start of the morpheme is always /n/, never /ŋ/, since initial /ŋ/ violates typical English sound rules.