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[ɪŋ] is actually standard. Short i. (former graduate school singers' diction teacher, and current professional classical singer, here. IPA is a key tool of the

by Bud 7y ago

[ɪŋ] is actually standard. Short i. (former graduate school singers' diction teacher, and current professional classical singer, here. IPA is a key tool of the trade.)

kragen 7y ago
You're right! But the whole truth is more complicated. I speak a US dialect where [iŋ] is a standard pronunciation, as mentioned in https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-ing#Pronunciation https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-ing#Pronunciation and more obliquely in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_vowels#Tense%E2%80%93lax_neutralization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Englis..., but in other dialects (especially RP) [ɪŋ] and [ɪn] are the standard pronunciations and [iŋ] and [in] are not. There's a fairly comprehensive exploration of the vowel-quality-alternation question in https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3037 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3037 if you're interested. From the summary: As I mentioned, it's part of the folklore of sociolinguistics that the [in] pronunciation exists, and that it's (apparently) not stigmatized in the way that the [ɪn] pronunciation is, and that in fact it may be heard as [ɪŋ] or [iŋ] and even transcribed that way in some studies. As for singing diction, singing diction is prejudiced against high vowels (like [i]) to a sometimes absurd degree; you often hear the “-ing” suffix pronounced [ɛn] in popular music, because it lowers the vowel and thus increases the volume. The surprising thing is that this lowering is obvious to me, even though my dialect has the pin–pen merger, which would normally neutralize that contrast. A similar lowering transformation lowers things like "baby" [beɪbi] to the outlandish [beɪbɛ]. When I was a kid, this bothered me a lot. Now I no longer think there's anything wrong with it, but I think it's strong evidence that singing pronunciation has important differences from spoken pronunciation. There was a Language Log post on a student project analyzing differences in the same speaker's language between musical performances and interviews, focusing in particular on the alternation between [ɪn] and [ɪŋ], at https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3687 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3687. There's some good discussion in the comment thread there about how sung pronunciations often reflect not only the exigencies of singing to project (perhaps more important before microphones, but still practiced today) but also musical-genre-specific diction traditions. Some discussion also ensues about the [i]/[ɪ] alternation.
- kragen 7y ago
  I followed the rabbit hole a bit further and found http://dedalvs.free.fr/writing/dpetersoncomps.pdf http://dedalvs.free.fr/writing/dpetersoncomps.pdf and https://literalminded.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/engma-enigma/ https://literalminded.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/engma-enigma/, which cover the vowel-quality question in more detail.

by Bud 7y ago

[ɪŋ] is actually standard. Short i. (former graduate school singers' diction teacher, and current professional classical singer, here. IPA is a key tool of the trade.)

kragen 7y ago

You're right! But the whole truth is more complicated. I speak a US dialect where [iŋ] is a standard pronunciation, as mentioned in https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-ing#Pronunciation https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-ing#Pronunciation and more obliquely in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_vowels#Tense%E2%80%93lax_neutralization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Englis..., but in other dialects (especially RP) [ɪŋ] and [ɪn] are the standard pronunciations and [iŋ] and [in] are not. There's a fairly comprehensive exploration of the vowel-quality-alternation question in https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3037 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3037 if you're interested. From the summary: As I mentioned, it's part of the folklore of sociolinguistics that the [in] pronunciation exists, and that it's (apparently) not stigmatized in the way that the [ɪn] pronunciation is, and that in fact it may be heard as [ɪŋ] or [iŋ] and even transcribed that way in some studies. As for singing diction, singing diction is prejudiced against high vowels (like [i]) to a sometimes absurd degree; you often hear the “-ing” suffix pronounced [ɛn] in popular music, because it lowers the vowel and thus increases the volume. The surprising thing is that this lowering is obvious to me, even though my dialect has the pin–pen merger, which would normally neutralize that contrast. A similar lowering transformation lowers things like "baby" [beɪbi] to the outlandish [beɪbɛ]. When I was a kid, this bothered me a lot. Now I no longer think there's anything wrong with it, but I think it's strong evidence that singing pronunciation has important differences from spoken pronunciation. There was a Language Log post on a student project analyzing differences in the same speaker's language between musical performances and interviews, focusing in particular on the alternation between [ɪn] and [ɪŋ], at https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3687 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3687. There's some good discussion in the comment thread there about how sung pronunciations often reflect not only the exigencies of singing to project (perhaps more important before microphones, but still practiced today) but also musical-genre-specific diction traditions. Some discussion also ensues about the [i]/[ɪ] alternation.

kragen 7y ago
I followed the rabbit hole a bit further and found http://dedalvs.free.fr/writing/dpetersoncomps.pdf http://dedalvs.free.fr/writing/dpetersoncomps.pdf and https://literalminded.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/engma-enigma/ https://literalminded.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/engma-enigma/, which cover the vowel-quality question in more detail.