Talk:Pronunciation of English ⟨ng⟩

GSP errors

The content of this article is very good. Something I recommend is just looking out for GSP errors and working on clarity. Good stuff! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xjri222 (talk • contribs) 02:39, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

"Even though there was no G sound to begin with"

That is not true. "G-dropping" refers to the modification of the original [ɪŋɡ] pronunciation that is still found in some areas of the UK. The /ɡ/ is literally dropped as the distinction between alveolar and velar nasals isn't phonemic in those dialects (as it isn't in e.g. Italian, Spanish or any Slavic language apart from Polish). Rather, they are perceived as the same phoneme (as they still might be in other accents of English in words such as Bengali). The [ɪŋ] pronunciation came later and it's always coexisted with the less prestigious (well, depending on the region) [ɪn ~ ən]. I don't have a source for this right now but the statement needs to be modified. Sol505000 (talk) 05:55, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

The term "G-dropping" is a popular grapheme-centered expression, and historically and phonologically inaccurate. I don't how commonly the term "G-dropping" is used for the real diachronic G-dropping ([ŋɡ] > [ŋ]) that occurred in most English varieties outside of the Midlands, but to avoid confusion, we might add a word or two about it in the lede. For clarity, I have tweaked the incorrect "even though there was no G sound to begin with". –Austronesier (talk) 07:24, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

The article crucially omits the merger of the gerund and the present participle. Perhaps most of Phonological history of English consonant clusters#G-dropping, where this page used to redirect, needs to be moved here. Also Minkova (2014: 137) says even Queen Elizabeth writes <besichen> for 'beseeching' ... Well into the eighteenth century, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats and Tennyson rhyme <-in>: <-ing> (Lass 1999: 120). In SSBE [-ɪŋ] began to be preferred in educated speech by the end of the nineteenth century ... The stigmatisation of [-ɪn] both in British and American English is undoubtedly due to orthographic prescriptivism. Nardog (talk) 08:54, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

Most of the sources used discuss "g dropping" from a perspective which assumes ng coalescence and the article reflects them. It would be nice to get a more universal perspective on the topic, but that is an issue with the sources we are drawing from, not an invitation to insert WP:OR into the article. AquitaneHungerForce (talk) 11:49, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

Hijacking

There must be a way to have an article about the ng-grapheme without hijacking an inherently morphological topic and downgrading it to a subtopic. –Austronesier (talk) 17:08, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

How did I "downgrade" it to a subtopic? It's literally 90% of the article. The article as it is now is almost exclusively about g-dropping. Sol505000 (talk) 18:19, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

If it were so, I could simply undo the move without much further changes. Now it would entail a rather massive revert which I won't undertake since the added content itself is of course valuable–just totally unrelated to the ING-variable. Maybe I'll just split out "G-dropping" for further improvements. I have collected some nice literature about it last week (diachronic morphology is a fun topic). –Austronesier (talk) 19:02, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Merging or splitting some content off to -ing is another viable option. Nardog (talk) 19:05, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, that's an option too. Maybe that article is a safer space :) –Austronesier (talk) 19:51, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

What applies to all instances of (what corresponds to standard) /ɪŋ/ and what applies only to the suffix -‍ing indeed strike me as deserving of separate discussions, FWIW. Nardog (talk) 02:39, 16 May 2022 (UTC)