Do you pronounce letter "T" when you say:
It doesn't matter.
and
What are you doing?
And what about letter "G" in the second sentence?
When it comes to British English, of course.
The letter "t" isn't silent in these words, but how it's pronounced dependa on who's speaking. In the second sentence, "ng" is a digraph. It's pronounced /ŋ/, not /ŋg/, by most speakers.
Well, if you ask me, for American English, the /t/ sound like the /d/ sound. That's what we called the flap t sound.
As for the ng sound, here are some link for you.Phonetics: The sounds of American English
NG Consonant: American English Pronunciation - YouTube
Hope these helps!
I'm a bit confused, 5jj and BC. When you say 'in this sentence' do you really mean sentence, or in final position, or something else? I've been taught to pronounce ng as /ŋ/ always in the -ing verb ending--in most words, actually. And that's what I've always heard, too. Would it be different in another sentence? Perhaps if doing were followed by a word beginning with a vowel?
For most native speakers, ng in the -ing ending is always /ŋ/, even when it is followed by a vowel. For speakers of some dialects, it is always /ŋg/. This is true whenever ng comes at the end of a word, or of a stem.
It is usually /ŋg/ in the middle of the word, except as a stem-ending - compare' finger' ( /ŋg/) and 'singer' ( /ŋ/)
In these cases, the "t" and the "g" are soft sounds. You can hear them when you pronounce the words but they are not strongly pronounced.
Kathleen
I don't know what you mean by 'soft sounds'.
The /t/ in 'matter' may be voiced in AmE (and may be glottalised in some dialects of BrE), but I don't see what makes it 'soft'.
We pronounce /g/ in the words we have been discussing always, and only, in the situations I have described. Whether or not it is pronounced depends on the word itself, and on the dialect of the speaker.
Last edited by 5jj; 23-Aug-2011 at 16:20. Reason: typo