Pronounciation?

[Tomii515]

How do you pronounce the japanese 'g'?

like...

が ぎ ぐ ... etc.

From what I've heard and read, and thought all this time, it was like the English g.

In the Genki audio thingy, they pronounce it like 'ng' in 'song'
I also read that the 'ng' thing fro 'g' was dialectal (<-- is that a word? lol), and that the 'g' sound was more common in Japanese, or something like that.

So, basically, I wanted to know if I should say it like 'g' or like 'ng'

thanks~

 

[Zirdante]

As far as I know its ng, but maybe it gets shortened to g if you speak real quick?

 

[nice gaijin]

Generally, the Japanese G is a voiced velar plosive, what you would call a "hard g," like the one in "go," "gap" and "gear."

In most dialects, the only time you would hear the "ng" sound (velar nasal, IPA character ŋ) is when the g is preceded by the moraic nasal ん. The only exception to this I am aware of is the "proper" pronunciation news anchors are trained to use, which only apply this sound to certain words like 大学 (daigakɯ̃ / daiŋakɯ̃ ) It's possible that the Genki CDs use it as well, but you are safe using the hard g, as do practically all Japanese people in everyday conversation.

 

[Tomii515]

Generally, the Japanese G is a voiced velar plosive, what you would call a "hard g," like the one in "go," "gap" and "gear."

In most dialects, the only time you would hear the "ng" sound (velar nasal, IPA character ŋ) is when the g is preceded by the moraic nasal ん. The only exception to this I am aware of is the "proper" pronunciation news anchors are trained to use, which only apply this sound to certain words like 大学 (daigakɯ̃ / daiŋakɯ̃ ) It's possible that the Genki CDs use it as well, but you are safe using the hard g, as do practically all Japanese people in everyday conversation.

Ahh, thanks
That cleared things up ^_^

 

[bachir]

thanks

that was an instructive explanation. thanks nice gaijin

 

[Tomii515]

Also, what I read in genki, is that when ん is before a vowel, or nothing, it's nasalized. Is this true? o_o

 

[nice gaijin]

ん is a moraic nasal: it is always nasalized. I've discussed this in some depth in this post

here's a response I wrote to your a while back talking about this very subject:

well, in Japanese phonology, the ん is called a moraic nasal, and is very interesting character, as it (much like the sokuon) has no individual pronunciation (ie you never see っ or ん by themselves, or at the beginning of a word).

The ん character has a variety of romanizations, because it actually adopts the place of articulation of the following sound (both vowels and consonants), but is realized as a nasal sound in that place of articulation. It's an "n" in cases like さんぜん (sanzen) and みんぞく (minzoku), and an "m" in words like にほんばし (nihombashi). There are several other phonetic realizations of this character; it's called assimilation.
I've gone into more detail on this subject in this thread. Here's a direct link to my post regarding ん.

In direct response to your above post, the ん placed before a vowel is actually a nasalized version of the vowel. Look to my linked post for examples.