Pronouncing "анг—"

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

I have a question about the pronunciation of the word английский (and all related words, like английски, Англия, etc.):

Does the letter н nazalize to [N] ([ŋ]) (the sounds in English singing) or is it still pronounced [n]?

Thank you in advance.

Comments

[kasak.livejournal.com]

I've always said [n], since Russian is a fair phonetic language for the most part. Pronouncing it with [ŋ] isn't a big deal though. It's really just nitpicking.

All the Russian words that I've grown up using that are borrowed from another language with a bit more nasals, they just pronounce it as it's spelled.

ie. I would say ресторан (restaurant) as [re-stor-'an], not [re-stor-'aŋ] like the Germans say or [re-stor-'ã] as the French say. From my experience, from my language application, I do not use nasals while speaking Russian. Polish, though, is a different story.

Re:

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'll keep that in mind. My first instinct was to keep it un nazalized, as [n] but I know that languages that don't nasalize n as much as we do still do at times. Like Spanish: pongo ['poŋgo], banco [baŋko] etc.

[sekhet.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Not a native speaker, so someone who is should correct me as appropriate, but I don't think it's nasalized, or, if it is, not very strongly.

Now, I haven't taken any courses where the positioning of the tongue to correctly formulate Russian sounds is discussed, so it's likely that I'm off my rocker, or at least that my terminology is inexact, but Russian tends to be spoken with the tongue farther forward in the mouth than English; i.e. many consonants that in english I would pronounce with my tongue on my palate I pronounce in russian with the tongue on the back of my teeth. This is true of my pronunciation of "English" versus "Anglijskij" - the "eng" sound is with the back of the tongue raised against the palate, while the "ang" sound is much farther forward. This, to my ear, gives the Russian a crisper sound than the English. (a tangentially-related side note: many of my russian friends have their resting tongue position on their upper palate, tip resting against the back of their top teeth, while mine is on the bottom of my mouth.)

If I had one of those books showing the correct mouth shape for the various sounds I could be of more help (and sound less crazy); unfortunately, I am bookless, and therefore sound quite mad (and a little racy, what with all the tongue discussion... ;) ). Sorry....

Re:

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

Yes, very racy :)

No, actually, that was quite helpful. Thank you.

[dhr-eigen.livejournal.com]

it doesn't

Both

[sinistrorsum.livejournal.com]

It does in very rapid speech. Normally it doesn't.

Re: Both

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

Thank you.