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Comment by Sophistifunk | Hacker News Reader

I've always aimed at "ngwen" although as a native English speaker I'm still not great at starting words with "ng" despite years of trying. It's more common in Australia than most western countries as a lot of Aboriginal words use it so we have it in place names, such as "Ngunawal" an area near Canberra. On TV (since we have a few celebrities named Nguyen) they just wuss out and tend to go with "Win"

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I'm Vietnamese, but I never figured out a good way to teach people pronouncing "ng" until a recent vocal lesson, so I'll give it a try here. When you say "Go", you'll find the back of your tongue make a quick contact with the roof of your mouth to make the "k" consonant. If you try to gradually slow that down, keeping your tongue touching the roof for longer, and tone down the edge in "k", and you'll get "ng". And hopefully you'll be saying "Ngo" after a few tries.

Yes, "g" and "ng" both involve the back of your tongue contacting the roof of your mouth. (Technically, that area of the roof of your mouth is the "velum", and they are called "velar" consonants.)

The difference is that, with "g", the flow of air is out from your mouth (and the "g" interrupts that flow, which is why a "g" sound cannot be held), whereas with "ng", the flow of air is out from your nose (which is why a "ng" sound can be held indefinitely).

> I'm still not great at starting words with "ng" despite years of trying

The trick that worked for me is that I know how to end on "ng", and that I can hold that sound. So I froze my mouth in that position, and used that position at the start of the word. After doing that a few times, it became easy.

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