Pronunciation of English ⟨ng⟩

In English, the digraph ⟨ng⟩ often represents the velar nasal, as in long and nothing . In other cases, it represents a sequence of the velar nasal followed by the voiced velar stop, as in longer , which had been the original pronunciation of the digraph up until Early Modern English when the sound was lost in most words, giving a phonemic status in English. Another pronunciation is , as in angel and one pronunciation of longevity (alternatively pronounced with , , by analogy with long).

NG-coalescence

In Old English and Middle English, any ng sequence stood for two sounds: the velar nasal [ŋ] followed by the voiced velar stop [ɡ]. The velar nasal did not have a phonemic status, being a mere allophone of /n/, as in Spanish or Italian (or as in Modern Standard English in words such as Bengali or Vancouver, where there is a free variation between an alveolar nasal and a velar nasal). From Early Modern English onwards, the oral stop [ɡ] ceased to be pronounced in educated London speech, giving /ŋ/ a phonemic status according to some analyses (some scholars still reject it as a phoneme and consider it to be a realization of the underlying /nɡ/). This is termed NG-coalescence by John C. Wells. There are certain varieties of English where the ng-coalescence did not take place, such as those spoken in the western part of the English Midlands and the middle north of England, such as Brummie, Mancunian and Scouse. Since the underlying form in those dialects is /nɡ/ (i.e. the speakers perceive [n] and [ŋ] to be the same sound), the g is literally dropped for those speakers who use [ɪn] etc.