An Introduction to French Pronunciation

The Consonants in Detail: (III) /r/, /l/ and the Nasals 113
normally alveolar – i.e. the tip of the tongue makes contact
with the teeth in French but with the alveoli in English. A
dental [n] occurs in English, however, in words or phrases
in which the consonant immediately precedes the dental
fricative /θ/, e.g. tenth, anthem, enthusiast.
16.3.3 The palatal nasal //
The point of articulation of this consonant, which does not
exist in English, is the palate, i.e. the front of the tongue is
raised until it touches the palate. There will be no difficulty in
making contact in the right place if a conscious effort is made
to ensure that the tip of the tongue is lowered, touching the
bottom teeth, when pronouncing //.
// is always written gn, and it occurs in only two positions,
viz. either between vowels, as in agneau /ao/, vignoble
/vibbl/ (or very occasionally, between a vowel and the semiconsonant
/j/, as in (nous) peignions /pεjf/), or at the end
of a word, as in Allemagne /alma/, (ils) peignent /pε/, vigne
/vi/.
It should be noted that // is one phoneme and that it is to
be distinguished from the succession of two phonemes /nj/, as
in French union /ynjf/ or (but pronounced with less tension)
in English union /junjcn/, vineyard /vinjcd/. That said, it must
also be pointed out that there is an apparently increasing
tendency for native-speakers of French to pronounce /nj/
instead of // in the intervocalic position, e.g. agneau /anjo/
for /ao/, and there is no good reason why this pronunciation
should not be used by foreigners. But, at the end of a
word, as in Allemagne, peignent, vigne, there is no acceptable
alternative to //.
16.3.4 The velar nasal /ŋ/
It is a moot point whether or not the sound /ŋ/, which is that
of English ng in ring, etc., should be included in the inventory
of French phonemes. It is true that it occurs almost exclusively
(but see 18.3.4) in words ending in -ing borrowed from English,
e.g. building /bildiŋ/, meeting /mitiŋ/, parking /parkiŋ/, and