Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 September 26

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September 26

Are there native English speakers who pronounce "kings" (etc.) - like: kiŋgs / kiŋgz /, i.e. pronouncing the g?

HOOTmag (talk) 17:27, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I've never heard it. There may be some who pronounce the g in singular form (just "king"), but not in plural. And if anyone did, it would almost certainly come out as a [k] (as in "sinks"). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 17:39, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Sure? When I wrote /kiŋgs/ I meant (of course) /kiŋgz/. Why whould the /g/ in /kiŋgz/ come out as a /k/? the /z/ doesn't let it come out as a /k/. HOOTmag (talk) 18:01, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm slightly confused. Who doesn't pronounce the g in "kings"? Vimescarrot (talk) 17:49, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Are you a native english speaker? If you are - are you aware of the difference between /n/ and /ŋ/? HOOTmag (talk) 18:01, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

People in some parts of Utah tend to pronounce the 'g' harder than the rest of the US. Wrad (talk) 18:12, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Shamefully, I haven't yet mastered IPA, but I believe what HOOTmag is asking about is a prominent feature of the Birmingham-area accent known as Brummie. According to the article Phonological history of English consonants, this pronunciation was once standard in Middle English (so that, for example, singer rhymed with finger), but a sound-change known as Ng-coalescence, aka "the singer-finger split", caused many words to lose the hard g immediately following ŋ. This process has proceeded less far in Brummie and other neigboring English dialects/accents than in "Standard English." 87.81.230.195 (talk) 18:16, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I thought /ŋ/ represented the sound made by the "ng", while /n/ was the "n" in "nice". The pronunciation as listed by Wiktionary is indeed /kɪŋ/. Unless I'm not understanding your question correctly, the answer is no. Xenon54 / talk / 18:18, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

(ec x2):The additional /ɡ/ sound is kept in several regional accents in English English, see Phonological_history_of_English_consonants#Ng-coalescence. Coming two miles from the edge of Birmingham, that would explain why I mostly do. Not so sure about the specific case of kings though, I certainly keep it in the singular (but not I notice in 'singular', how odd!). Mikenorton (talk) 18:20, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

In contrast, having a northern American accent, I'd pronounce kings as /kɪŋz/, with no extra /g/, but I can't imagine how I would contort the back of my mouth to pronounce /sɪŋgjəlɚ/ without the /g/. rspεεr (talk) 18:40, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

In the US, I occasionally hear /kɪŋɡ/ or /kɪŋk/ in the sg, but I have never noticed what happens in the plural for those people. kwami (talk) 18:33, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Wouldn't /kɪŋk/ be the word "kink"? rspεεr (talk) 18:40, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Maybe in Long Island? Cute and funny story: This girl I once knew once worked at a camp. At this camp, a little girl came up to her and asked "Why do people keep saying 'LonG Island' (pronounced like lawn-guh) every time I say that I'm from LonG Island? I don't say LonG Island." To which my friend just smiled and said, "Yeah, hun. You actually do." okay, maybe it's not as funny in print. Dismas|^(talk) 18:44, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Long Island vs. Long Guy-lund. Good example. I've never heard anyone emphasize the G that way in "king". I was thinking of "penguin", where some folks say "pen-guin" and others say "peng-guin". →Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots

Lol to the Lon-g-Island story. What this makes me think of is an analogy to French - manger (mon-jay) versus mangera (mon-jera). Similarly, those examples - Long Island, Finger, and Singer - all include a vowel sound after the g, so it makes sense to articulate the 'g' as a stepping-stone to the vowel: as Lon Guy Lend; fin-ger, sin-ger. For king, without a following vowel-sound (even kings) I don't see this as likely, and I have never heard it (maybe King Her in checkers... (kin-ger); but I much more commonly hear this sound as ŋ. As an example, it might be conceivable to hear "Kin-gof-Lon-guylend," but that still requires the contextual placement of the sounds before a vowel. Michael Sheflin (talk) 21:04, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I can imagine that kings may be pronounced [kɪŋɡz] even by people who pronounce the singular [kɪŋ]. Like many languages, English isn't particularly fond of nasal + fricative sequences, and many accents of English tend to break them up by inserting a stop in between the nasal and the fricative. People who pronounce tense and tents as homophones or near-homophones, or who pronounce tens and tends as homophones or near-homophones, may well have a velar stop in kings even if they don't have one in king. +Angr 19:37, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

But in "tense/tents", the extra [t] comes about, at least partially, because of the place of assimilation in the following fricative, not just the preceding nasal. i.e., it's both preceded and followed by alveolars, so the epenthesized stop is also alveolar. In "kings", the nasal and fricative aren't in the same place...if the epenthesis is affected by the POI of the surrounding sounds, there's just as much reason to hear [kiŋdz] as there is to hear [kiŋgz]. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:46, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

The homorganic tendency of NC is much stronger than that of stop-fricative, so I would think [kɪŋɡz] would be more likely. We allow [z] after all sorts of consonants, but heterorganic NC sequences are rare, and many people separate them with an epenthetic stop, as in pumpkin, where it's even reflected in the spelling. kwami (talk) 20:50, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

The pumpkin example is interesting because some people do the exact opposite thing -- not only do they leave out the epenthetic stop, but they assimilate the nasal to the same POI as the stop in the next syllable. (I think the famous example for that is "handbag" --> "hambag".) rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 21:01, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

And Canberra --> "kambra". -- JackofOz (talk) 09:07, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

As a local, I agree that this is the local pronunciation. [kʰæmbɹa] or for younger people [kʰɛmbɹa] 130.56.65.24 (talk) 04:03, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Talking about Long Island, what about the pronounciation of Kings County? Jørgen (talk) 20:16, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

That suggests some useful tests such as "We Three Kings of Orient Are" and Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be, although it's better to remove all succeeding consonants in a phrase such as The King and I or Norman Podhoretz's memoir, Making It. In fact, Podhoretz's bibliography, love it or loathe it, has several useful "-ng" words in different letter combinations, such as Breaking Ranks and Doings and Undoings. —— Shakescene (talk) 04:13, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

What is this term?

About 7 years ago I learned of a term in my high school health class where the first word was "accidental" but I can't recall the second word. The term apparently means people who believe that the magnitude of the victim's injuries in an accident reflects the amount of responsiblity the victim has for the accident. Can someone help me out here? 128.2.251.173 (talk) 23:10, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Hmm.. The word is for the people who believe this? "Accidental liability" refers to an offending party accidentally violating the rights of another party (i.e. accidentally victimizing someone) and thus the penalty incurred is not weighed in the same way as an intentional violation; i.e. manslaughter versus murder. Thus the victim would incur responsibility commensurate with his or her own intentionality. Let me know if that's what you mean. Michael Sheflin (talk) 00:25, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps you were thinking of the opposite but parallel idea in civil law (where you seek damages or relief, rather than criminal punishment), which in U.S. law, based on English Common law, is contributory negligence. That term describes the amount of responsibility the victim of an accident has for his or her own injuries. For example, if a drunken pedestrian walking against a red light is struck by a motorist with bad brakes who should still have seen him and stopped, a judge or jury might find 40% contributory negligence on the part of the plaintiff (the pedestrian who sued), and give him only 60% of the damages they would otherwise have granted for medical bills, lost earnings, pain and suffering. —— Shakescene (talk) 01:30, 27 September 2009 (UTC)