Can anyone suggest any techniques/excercises for sounds which are unfamiliar to English speakers.
I’m really struggling with ‘NG’
Is NG particularly troublesome at the beginning of words? Could you give some examples of words you trip up on?
I’m no expert but I would say remember that the “G” is a guttural stop. So there is a sound we make when making the sound (or making fun of) some one drinking… we say “glug glug glug”. The g is a gutural stop… so there is just the hint of an n and then the “click” of the stop.
Hope that helps…
Hi Rob,
‘g’ by itself is usually a gutural stop, like Bobi said. But in a word like ‘ring’, the ‘ng’ is nasalised and not usually a stop, except in certain English dialects - Brian Cox comes to mind…
I have seen in the not too distant past a web article which describes each of the Welsh nasal mutations and gives an example English word with the sound combination in,
This amazed me at the time - I wouldn’t have thought it possible. Unfortunately I can’t seem to find it now.
I have a feeling that ng was ‘anglican’ - dropping the ‘a’ in the word gives the sound.
I’ll keep looking…
Rich 
I think I’d be right in saying (though I haven’t been through the whole dictionary to check) that in the majority of places you find the letter ng, it is preceded by a vowel sound. Even when it comes at the start of a word because of a nasal mutation, there is still the vowel sound -
yn + Caerdydd = yng Nghaerdydd > the two 'ng’s here blend into each other and the preceding sound is from the ‘y’ - so here, it sounds like “ung” as in ‘rung’.
fy + ci = fy nghi > again, the y sound precedes to give you another ‘ung’ sound… if you say it all at once you get vung-hee.
For other vowel sounds, swap in the sounds you get in rang, ring, wrong, rung (ok, so I can’t think of an ‘eng’ off the top off my head - but you get the idea).
Thanks everyone, this is going to sound utterly gross, but when I try to make that sound it feels as if I am trying to suck the contents of my nose back into my mouth and is verging on painful.
Out of interest, do you get the same feeling when you pronounce english words that end in ng?
That is intersting Siaron,
having tried it out, I realise that in most cases I drop the G anyway, and if I do sound it I feel a slight ‘buzzing’ sensation. English ‘ng’ endings, being at the end of a word don’t carry as much emphasis as they do towards the beginning of geirau Cymraeg.
I found this an interesting question @rob-7, because my reaction to ‘ng’ was that it felt very familiar, because we teach the ng digraph to English primary school children as part of their phonics lessons that support reading (and spelling) now. So it will be familiar to little ones - how times change, your query makes me realise how ‘normal’ the phonic method feels now.
You’ve thought about how you say things like king, sing, rang, sang - what about ‘singing’ or ‘ringing’? Or Bangladesh? Maybe you’re trying too hard - try saying it without putting too much force behind it?
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Just listen to yourself and others saying in Saesneg SING, SANG, THONG. We don’t really pronounce n and g separately. There is a fluid transitional glide going on there.
Try saying the English word Young. Now miss off the Y. Thats a start “ung”. Now miss off the u if you can though it will probably sound all right if you leave it on. Ung-hum-ree
I have a problem when ng is in the middle of a word e.g. cyngor. I get told off for pronouncing it with my Lancashire accent so it sounds like two words cyn then gor.
Maybe it’s time for us to revive this old thread?
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I found I had been mis-pronouncing that word for the past 30+ years when it came up in level 2 !
Diolch Catrin
A post was merged into an existing topic: Having trouble saying certain sounds or sound combinations? Ask here! Ll / Ch / R / Rh / Ng / U / W