Hi again and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English pronunciation podcast.

My name is Amanda and this is our 219th episode.

Today I'm going to explain a sequence of consonant sounds that can be tricky to pronounce.

The G plus N together,

as in the word signal. What makes a word like signal so hard to say? Well, in that word, we're going from a stop sound, the G sound, into an N sound, which is a nasal sound.

Stops are sounds in which we totally block the air for a tiny fraction of a second,

and then release the sound with a little puff.

Say the G sound and notice how the air is blocked, then released.

G. Besides the G sound, there are five other stop sounds in English. They are the T sound,

T, D sound, D, D, P sound, P sound, P, B, B, and, and K sound, and K, nasal sounds, those are the N sound, N, M sound, M, and N-G sound, and N-G sound, are created when a tiny flap, where the nasal passage meets the throat, opens, and allows the air to flow through the nose

instead of the mouth. Yes, it's kind of weird, but it can be easily demonstrated with the M sound.

Say the M sound for a moment.

Now take your fingers

and hold your nose shut

while saying the M.

You can't do it, right?

That's because your lips are blocking

the air from coming out your mouth.

If the nasal passage is also closed, no air or sound can come out.

The N sound and NG sound are created similarly, but the tongue is used to block the air instead of the lips.

Now that you hopefully understand the G sound alone and the N sound alone, let's get back to the G plus

N combination and what makes it difficult. It's hard because instead of saying the G fully

...