Sunday, November 1, 2009

Ngew Sounds

One of the (many many) differences between K. and English is that K. has word initial velar nasals.

To back up from the jargon a second - a velar nasal is a sound. English has this sound as well, it's a nasal sound you make by closing your mouth at the velar (near that hangy-downy bit) and making a sound through your nose. It's the -ng sound in 'sing', 'thing', 'ring' and 'wing'. The differences is that in English it only occurs at the end of a word, never at the start.

The word for 'I/me' in K. is 'nga'. It's been more than a month and I still trip up trying to get my tongue to fall into that position. It's just not natural for me. It ends up somewhere near my hard pallet (ie. the roof of my mouth).

I've started a rigorous training regime so that A. doesn't have to correct me every time I try and say 'I'.

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