Hello, listeners of the world, and welcome to this week's Seattle Learning Academy American

English pronunciation podcast.

My name is Mandy, and this is podcast number 25.

When I was writing today's show, I realized that I've been doing these podcasts for over six months now.

It certainly doesn't feel like it's been that long.

I also can't believe I'm not even close to running out of topics to talk about each week.

I'm curious how long many of you have been listening to this show.

If you've been listening for a few months now, send me an email, tell me where you're

from, how long you've been speaking English, and what your favorite topics have been.

You can also tell me anything particular about your language and any topics you've been

hoping to hear about.

Let's get right to today's show.

Today I'm going to talk about an often mispronounced sound, the NG sound.

The NG sound is the final sound in the word ring, and sounds like this.

NG is a digraph, just like the T-H and S-H and C-H and a few others in English.

The N-G sound is one sound that gets spelled with the combination of two letters.

Letter combination sounds are called digraphs.

The NG sound happens by pressing the back of our tongue to our soft palate.

We haven't talked much about the soft palate yet.

If you can, take the tip of your tongue and roll it as far back toward your throat as you can.

See if you can feel where the bony part of the top of your mouth becomes soft.

That soft area at the top of your mouth, very near your throat, is called the soft palate.

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