Re: Phonetic question

"Kevin Wayne Williams" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

> When I
> say "singer", "ringer", "finger", etc., it is always the same sequence
> ... tongue to palate, same as in "sing", then "ger" as a sound.

This is where you are losing most of us. I don't think most native speakers
of U.S. English would throw finger in with singer and ringer as being
pronounced similarly although I don't think it is unheard of. For the latter
examples, what most of us are doing is saying the "sing" exactly the way you
describe it but adding an "er" sound only (really an "urr") to the end of
it. We are not adding the "ger" sound as you describe. For finger, on the
other hand, we are saying fing (rhymes with what you describe for sing) and
then adding a full "gurr" at the end. This is different from the way we
pronounce ing verbs with er added to the end like singer, ringer, dinger,
etc.

Jeff