Name: Pronounce English More Smoothly with Assimilation: N + G, K = /ŋ/ | American English Pronunciation
Uploaded: 2026-01-09T18:18:02.000Z
Duration: 3 min 55 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

Is your goal to speak with smoother transition between words?

Present continuous

Then you are looking for some assimilation rules, and I have one for you.

Today, assimilation is when our mouth gets ready for the next sound.

Let's learn the rule for when we have the letter N followed by a K or a G sound.

To better understand this, let's think about what our mouth does when we say the N sound.

When you say the N sound, the tip of your tongue is touching the spot where your teeth and the skin meet on the roof of your mouth.

For the K and the G sound, the air is puffing out of the mouth and the tip of the tongue is low in the mouth with the back of the tongue pulled high up.

The N sound is the sound that is going to change.

So we keep that nasality, the air moving out of the nose, but

the place of articulation is going to match the K and the G.

When the place of articulation matches the K and the G with the tip of the tongue down and we have that nasality still, the sound is going to be.

Again, we write that with letters N and G, but

the phonetic transcription is that little N with a little hook at the bottom.

This is going to make the phrase in kind sound like in kind, and

So you can hear that the N no longer really sounds like a true N.

Now, you can always continue to say in kind and on grass, totally fine.

But if you think your ears are playing tricks on you and people are saying these differently, they probably are if they are very skilled at speaking English.

So what we're going to do is let's just practice these in kind.

In kind again, think of this in as being ing, like the end of a word running.

For on grass, think of saying ong instead of on.

All right, let's try those one more time in kind.

All right, so again, N GR is going to keep its nasality with air moving out of the nose.

And for the assimilation rule, when it is followed by the K or the g, where the tip of the tongue is low, we have a sound that's similar in English, So we are going to use that sound instead to save a little bit of effort and to be able to connect the words smoothly.

I know people are going to notice the difference.

If you found this helpful, please share this with your friends.

I would love to know what you thought about this lesson.

It's a little bit different for me, and I am here to help you.