English nasals

Lecture No.7
English Nasals
The basic characteristic of a nasal consonant is that the air escapes through the nose. In this case, the soft palate is lowered. In nasal consonants, air does not pass through the mouth. It is prevented by a complete closure in the mouth at some point.
Nasal consonants are / m /, /n / and /? /. / m / and / n / are pronounced as follows :
1. The soft palate is lowered.
2. For / m / the mouth is blocked by closing the two lips, for / n / the tip of the tongue is pressed against the alveolar ridge and the sides of the tongue are against the sides of the palate . 3.Both / m / and / n / are voiced in English . They are described as follows:
/ m / voiced , bilabial , nasal .
/ n / voiced , alveolar , nasal .
/ m / and / n / can occur initially, medially and finally.
/ ? / is pronounced as follows:
1. The soft palate is lowered and all the air passes out through the nose.
2. The mouth is blocked by the back of the tongue pressed against the soft palate.
This sound is described as follows:
/ ? / voiced, nasal, velar.
This sound does not occur initially.
In some words / g / is pronounced after / ? / before a following vowel as in anger / a?g? /and finger / fi?g?/.
/ g / is not pronounced in the words singer / si??/ and hanger / ha??/ since each of these words can be divided into grammatical pieces :
sing + er , hang +er . These pieces are called morphemes. It can be concluded that singer and hanger are morphologically different from anger and finger.
A useful general rule is that words, which are formed from verbs plus suffixes, have no / g / sound such as singer / si?? / and hanging/ ha?i? / , but if not , / g / is pronounced as in stronger / stro?g? / which is formed from the adjective strong / stro? / plus er , and anger / a?g? / which is not formed out of a short word . Notice the difference between longer /lo?g? / which is fprmed from the adjective long / lo? / and longing / lo?i? / which is formed from thee verb long / lo? / . Consider the following examples :
lamb / lam /, lamp / lamp /, one / w?n /, lump / l?mp /, game / geim /, sons / s?nz /
complained / k?mpleind /, person / p?:sn /, fashion / fa?n /, reason / ri:zn /, occasion / ?kei3n / even / i:vn /, region / ri:d3n /, kitchen / kit?n /, bring / bri /, long ago / lo? ?gou /, among others / ?m?? ???z /, tons / t?nz /, sinner / sin? /, language / la?gwid3 / .