qestion about the 'n' sound

[samuraidragon]

in spoken japanese is there almost a slight ng sound when pronouncing 'n'? i noticed in the podcasts, when amerika-jin was said, it sounded a little bit like amerika-jing.


also, when you write 'san' (as in mr.) is it written in kanji or hirigana? what about for a foreigner?

[CrazySwayzee]

question #1
in japanese the n is phonetic, so the jin sounds like jing because of the ji.

like in san, when you say san, the n is pronounced as "en". however in english this is written as "n" because there are different "n" sounds.

for example: ke is written as "ke" because that's what け sounds like. and ん is written in english as "n" because it sounds different depending on the use (san, jin)

the single letter "n" cannot be pronounced without putting it next to a vowel (an, en, on, in,un)
question #2
from what I know,

things like san, kun, chan and such are written in Hiragana. I think this is because there are no chinese characters for these phrases

the same goes for wo, wa, desu, e.t.c.

I hope my rambling was useful

[Brody]

You'll definitely sometimes hear the ん sound as a nasal sound. I especially hear it on the news.

I asked my Japanese teacher once and he said older people say it that way a lot but more and more younger Japanese are dropping it and just saying like an "n."

[tiroth2]

Yes, people in certain regions pronounce it as a nasal "ng" sounds in certain contexts. It's definitely a different accent compared to "n".

[samuraidragon]

cool. thanks.

[tintinium]

Interestingly, が　can also sound like nga.

行きたいんですが。　can sound like ikitain dess nga.

If you're familiar with the vietnamese ng sound (now THAT's a difficult language to pronounce!!!) in Nguyen you can easily mimic the ng sound... which is easy in comparison. Tryin BEGINNING the word with the "ng" in sing... go ahead... try it now... it's difficult to get the hang of.

[penguinguin]

kun is written as 君