Pronounce English Accurately

Video Text

/n/ is made in exactly the same position as /t/ and /d/ and /s/ and /z/ - on the alveolar ridge. The difference is that it is nasal.

As with /m/, if you hold your nose and try to say /n/, your nasal cavity will fill up with air and your nose will expand in an uncomfortable way.

So /n/ is a voiced nasal stop.

The opening of the nasal cavity is achieved by lowering the uvula - a flap of moveable tissue above the tonsils and to the rear of the soft palate.

We cannot feel the uvula moving and we cannot see it easily. The closest you can get to feeling it in action is to make a series of [snsnsn] sounds.

If you do that slowly you can feel the air flow changing from nasal to oral and back again.

/n/ is a very common sound and is not a problem for most learners. The only problem is likely to be the difficulty of distinguishing /n/ and /l/ for learners whose languages don't have that distinction.

/n/ is nasal - /l/ is not; you can continue to make a /l/ sound without difficulty while holding your nose, but you cannot do that with /n/.

I will contrast /n/ and /l/ in a later lesson.

Some words with /n/ in initial position:

'new, knew'

'nose, knows'

'name'

'nail'

'gnaw'

In medial position:

'any'

'many'

'rainy'

'punish'

In final position:

'brown'

'green'

'gone'

'moon'

'sun'

'train'

/n/ is always spelt 'n' and is transcribed /n/, but there's a lot to say about silent letters near 'n', which are not pronounced at all.

Silent letters abound with the /n/ sound. We've got 'kn-' as in 'know' and 'knife' and 'knead' and 'knock' and 'gn-' as 'gnaw' and 'gnash', 'gnarl' and 'gnome'. All words beginning with 'gn'- are pronounced /n/.

Then there are a lot of words with silent '-gn' at the end, like 'align', 'malign', 'sign', 'consign' and 'impugn'.

Then there's 'reign' and 'sovereign', 'sovereignty' and 'foreign'. The pronunciation and spelling 'soveˈreignity' is actually wrong, although people may say it - the correct spelling and pronunciation is 'ˈsovereignty'.

As with words like 'autumnal', which we did earlier, both the 'g' and the 'n' are pronounced if the 'g' ends a syllable and the 'n' begins one.

So we have 'gnostic', not a very common word, at least not one that I use much, versus 'agnostic', and 'malign' versus 'malignant', 'sign' vs.. 'signal', 'resign' versus 'resignation'.

There is a silent letter 'p' in words from Greek beginning 'pn-': 'pneumonia', 'pneumothorax', and 'pneumoconiosis' and 'pneumatic'.

With 'mn-' there's just the one word, 'mnemonic' /nəˈmɒnɪk/.

So quite a lot of odd spellings.

A change of detail can happen when /t/ is followed by /n/ in words such as 'button, rotten' and 'bitten'. In this case the nasalisation can affect the /t/, resulting in a nasal release of the /t/: 'button, rotten, bitten', almost like blowing your nose! This is quite optional, though - button [ˈbʌtn] or [ˈbʌt.ən] are both fine.

Practice sentences with /n/ sounds:

Never! Not on your nelly, intoned Nelson.

Nine of the naughty nincompoops needed new noodles by night-time.

Never say never, because you never know what may happen next.

/nə, ən/