In and Ing

[Ming Dai]

Does the In sound like something with more N (innnn) and the ing sound like something with more I (iiiing)?

and why do i feel than any word with In sound like any word with Ang/Eng and vice versa with Ing than sound like any word with An/En (I mean it sound the same but of course with i)? i don't know if it is just me.

 

And thanks for the answer.

[艾墨本]

Your question(s) is a little confusing.

 

But the in/ing and en/eng is very different than English. This is because you will breathe out from your nose to pronounce them with a more nasally tone than in English. If there is a g at the end (ting, feng) you will raise the back of your tongue up against the back of your mouth at the same time. 

 

In Chinese, these two sounds are called 前鼻音 and 后鼻音 and you can get away with not differentiating them like most people in Gansu. But then you accent is far from standard. 

 

However, saying them like the English equivalents will affect how well people understand you. My name, for example, is Ben. When I say it in English it comes more from my throat while when I say it in Chinese with 本, I must consciously move the air flow and emphasis into my nose.

[Apollys]

In my experience, I have come across a lot of native Chinese audio samples (and personal conversations) in which they tend to mix up their ings and ins in a rather carefree manner.  I thin it's because Chinese n is closer to ng than the English n is to ng.  I notice when I speak a Chinese n, my tongue is flatter and farther back on the roof of my mouth than when speaking the English counterpart.

But you also have made another observation, that I think you just haven't quite been able to spell out precisely (@OP).  The vowel sounds aren't necessarily the same for the two.  For in, the vowel sound should always be an eee sound.  For ing, you will often hear a vowel sound that comes more from the back of the throat.  So 英 (ying1) may sound a bit like the English word young with the throat really tightened up (not exactly though!).  The pronunciation of ing can vary heavily from speaker to speaker, though native Chinese speakers may not differentiate them because they have trained their minds to classify this range of sounds as equivalent.

[Little Rabbit]

 I did not understand your questions very well. My suggestion is to focus on the vowels. Chinese does not have the /I/ vowel. It only has the /i/ vowel. 

[Publius]

I'm not sure whether the OP is a Chinese learning English or a foreigner learning Chinese.

 

Anyway, the fact is, many native Chinese speakers mix up their in's and ing's. I'm not an expert. The following is only based on my personal observation.

 

In northern Heibei, northern Shanxi, northern Shaanxi, southern Inner Mogolia, the local dialects do not have an 'n' coda, all n's become ng, for example 人民 reng2ming2. I'm not familiar with the dialects in Ningxia and Gansu, but situations there may be similar.

 

In Shanghai, Zhejiang, southern Jiangsu, part of Anhui however, it's the opposite. People from this region, when they speak Putonghua, because their mother tongue lacks the 'ng' sound, their pronunciations tend to be inconsistent. Listen to this girl, the host of Mandarin Corner on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBdRYkTp8Kw. She has a distinct southern accent. Her 欢迎 huan1yin2, 环境 huan2jin4, 安静 an1jin4 are not standard. (Later in the video she reveals she's from Jiangxi, a mountainous province neighboring Zhejiang.)

 

[Little Rabbit]

@publius Yes, she has an southern accent. I think she has more problems with those retroflexes, like shun4 bian4 顺便, zhu3yao4 主要. Do you think these are things that give her southern accent? 

[Publius]

Hard to say. The n-ng merger, the intonation, the pronunciation of er, other things. But I think her retroflexes are fine. Maybe doing it a bit too hard, but basically fine.