Reference page

Velar nasal

What is the ng sound?

English has 3 contrasting nasal sounds: m (same place as b), n (same place as d) and ŋ (same place as g)

• Compare hander [handə] and Hannah [ ˈhanə]. Can you hear the difference? hander has a stop [d] after the nasal [n].
• Now compare anger [ˈaŋgə] and hanger [ˈhaŋə]. Ignoring the h, you should hear a similar difference: anger has a stop [g] after the nasal [ŋ].

• Unlike anger, hanger doesn’t have a stop (g)
• Unlike Hannah, hanger is pronounced at the same place as g, not d

The spelling is ambiguous.

Don’t pronounce the stop [g] after the nasal [ŋ]:

at the ends of words (wrong, sing, hang, thing)

in nouns formed from those verbs (sing-er, hang-er, belong-ing)

in placenames (King-dom, Birming-ham, Notting-ham, Washing-ton, Kensing-ton)

Do pronounce it in comparative adjectives:

young-er, long-er, strong-er

Do pronounce it in the middle of unsplittable words

finger, anger, language, English, penguin, angle

Other accents

Some accents of English do not have the nasal ŋ on its own. Speakers of these accents will pronounce everything written as <ng> as [ŋg].

Other accents of English replace word-final [ŋ] with [n]. I do not recommend this to learners of English because of the potential for confusion (thin/thing, sin/sing, ran/rang, bun/bung, gone/gong, etc). Also, this pronuniation is often stigmatised; people may perceive it as 'lazy', especially in an otherwise Standard (SSBE) accent.