Nasal consonants/n/ /m/ /ŋ/ are produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. A nasal consonant is also called nasal stop or nasal continuant.
It is advisable to click on the phonemes /n/ /m/ /ŋ/ in the consonant charton the right before you listen to the song. To produce /ŋ/ you obstruct the air stream through your mouth by bringing the back of your tongue into contact with the soft palate. The spellings for /ŋ/ are:
'ng' as in sing, crying, long
'nk' as in rank, thanks, think
Paying special attention to these sounds, listen and sing along with Sing, a song composed by the Scottish band Travis
Do the gap- fill activity as you listen again. Use the clues (the nasal consonants/n/ /m/ /ŋ/ the words contain) as you need them, but remember you will lose points. You can repeat the activity as many times as you need to. Use the scroller on the right to move up or down.
Get lost into the Universe of Consonants and across the 5 activities proposed. The Beatles song, Across the Universe, interpreted here by the American singer-songwriter Fiona Applemight give us an insight into some of the most difficult consonant phonemes to identify in English /k/ /tʃ/ /dʒ/ /f/ /θ/ /ð/ /ʃ/ /ŋ/ /w/ /j/ .
Listen to the song and, if you know it, sing along as you read the lyrics just underneath focusing on the pronunciation of consonants.Dedicated to my teachers and my cousin in Brazil.
Do the matching exercise by dragging the words taken from the song on the right to the corresponding phonetic symbol they contain on the left. Use the bar to move up or down and check your score once you've finished. GOOD MATCHING!
To see the IPA phonetic symbols in the text, please ensure that you have installed a Unicode font that includes them all, for example Lucida Sans Unicode or Charis SIL (click name for free download).
This blog is mainly based on the field of phonetics addressed to teachers and students of English at all levels. The activities are interactive and can be used as lessons in class, a language lab, on-line or off-line (they can be photocopied).
