There's no 'should' about it. The natural pronunciation of that word in informal and even semi-formal English for many speakers is with /m/.
It's obvious to a teacher or someone with a particular knowledge in this field but not to an average native speaker. Many still believe they are saying /nd/ even when they naturally have /m/ instead. It takes time to realise that no matter how unreasonable /m/ might seem, /nd/ requires much more effort and is really challenging. So, full credit to
Lady Bracknell -
thanks for the link, I enjoyed it a lot :lol:
It is not a matter of 'wrongly pronounced'. Within a particular variety/dialect and context, a pronunciation that might be inappropriate in another context is natural and 'correct'. Unlike a lot of people these days, I happen to pronounce 'forehead' 'waistcoat' and 'often' as if they were spelt 'forrid', 'weskit' and 'offen'. That's not wrong, though I have to admit that it's a little dated.
Please, bear with me - I had 'wrongly' in inverted commas, didn't I
Changeable pronunciation may well be the true sign of any live language, not solely English. We also have people of different generations speaking slightly differently but still within the norm. It could be an issue in teaching though, especially when learners tend to rely more on spelling than actually on listening.
Spellings are a crude attempt to represent the sounds of one common spoken version of a word - and many of our spellings were fixed centuries ago. The pronunciation of words has changed, but the spelling hasn't. We cannot say that because a word is spelt in a particular way it must be pronounced in that way,
I was trying to understand what makes the word comprehensible when it is pronounced differently e.g. 'handbag'. Dictionaries have it like /handbag/ or /han(d)bag/ at best. Clearly, with only one sound altered (omitted) the word is still recognisable. In case with /'a'/ you need the whole context to understand that it was /hat/ in fact.
When I cannot understand a word in my L1 I try to imagine it written (or ask the speaker to spell it for me), the same is true for me in English. I assume other people follow the same procedure for recognising the word. If so, we still have to rely on the spelling. It looks like the way the word is pronounced is somehow anchored to the way it is spelt. Does it make sense?