Re: Phonetic question

necoandjeff wrote:

> "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.

I finally got a NSOE to say "finger" and "singer" for me, and noted the 
difference, but I definitely don't normally have a distinction in my own 
version of English.  It's one of the mostly-hidden bits of telltale on 
the way I learned English, I suppose.