Re: Phonetic question

"Kevin Wayne Williams" writes:

> Sean Holland wrote:

> ...
 
> > Perhaps in Kevin's dialect it is sing+ger.

> Closer to both being in+ger. I guess that I might make a tiny, tiny
> g at 
>   the end of the "in", but if it is there at all, it is small.

That's doubly weird, if you don't mind my saying so.  First, there's
no such thing as a tiny, tiny "g."  Either you stop the air flow by
raising your tongue to your soft palate, or you don't.

If you really say "singer" as "sin grrr," you must get a lot of funny
looks.  I've never heard a NSoE say the word anything like that, and
it would be extremely striking, with two wrong sounds in place of one
right one.

I certainly hope you don't do that "n" stuff in Japanese, with words
like "renga," "tonkatsu," "manga," etc.

The tendency for human beings, when they have a nasal followed by an
aural stop (a speech sound involving blocking the air passage by
closing the lips, raising one part or another of the tongue solidly
across some part of the roof of the mouth; what I am saying does not
apply to glottal stops), is to assimilate the nasal to the position
of the stop.  That means in casual conversation people say "ing-kum
tax" instead of the more formal "inn-kum tax," "kung-grew-unt"
instead of "kunn-grew-unt," etc.

When I started studying Spanish at age eight from my grandmother's
_High School Self Taught_, the pronunciation notes said "n" was like
English "n."  I went from then until high school calling blood
(sangre) "sahn-gray," etc.  Actually, I believe Spanish speakers call
a cat (un gato) "oong gah-toe," so I was wa-a-ay off.

Bart