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I'm not a native English speaker so I might not be exactly accurate with this, but whenever people (e.g. in films) say fucking, it sounds something like fucken.

There's no "g" at the end and instead of "i", I hear "e" (like in the word men).

Why is that? Am I that deaf or is the pronunciation really different from what the spelling would suggest?

If it is, why do people pronounce it this way? Why is it different than any other word ending with -ing (e.g.looking)?

tchrist
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    No -ing word has a /g/ at the end. Not a single one. – tchrist Nov 23 '14 at 22:47
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    Compare with "What are you doin'? I'm pluckin' a chicken!" when 'doing' and 'plucking' and 'chicken' all end with the same sound. – A E Nov 23 '14 at 22:49
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    @AE There is no word in English that ends with -ing in which there is ever a /g/ pronounced. Ever. Never ever. Not one. – tchrist Nov 23 '14 at 22:52
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    @tchrist: in any accent and dialect anywhere? – A E Nov 23 '14 at 22:53
  • @AE That’s right. It’s always a nasal consonant, never a voiced stop. There are however a few places where it can be both — just never at the end of a word. Contrast singer with finger: the second has both an /ŋ/ as well as a /g/ following it, but the first does not. No word that ends in -ing is ever pronounced /ŋg/ the way you have in finger. It just doesn’t happen. This is a misunderstanding. It may end with an /n/ or with an /ŋ/, but never with a /g/. – tchrist Nov 23 '14 at 22:57
  • @tchrist interesting! The 'inger' in singer/finger sounds the same to me though (London UK). (Also, thanks for the excellent Camel Book!) – A E Nov 23 '14 at 22:58
  • Also http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/42386/what-kind-of-human-character-or-regional-trait-does-the-habit-of-the-g-dropping – A E Nov 23 '14 at 23:13
  • One who longs is a longer; something with more length is longer. The two words may be spelled identically, but they don't even rhyme. One is /lɔŋər/ and the other is /lɔŋɡər/, which is longer in speech by one stop phoneme. In Indonesian (which has a good spelling system, unlike English) they'd be spelled differently: longer vs longger. – John Lawler Nov 23 '14 at 23:22
  • As to why people use syllabic /n/ instead of /ŋ/ whe saying imprecative fucking (i.e, fuckin' -- it's so common there's an apostrophic indulgence for it in eye dialect): saying fuck is taboo, and so is G-droppin, though not for the same reason. But it is associated with lower class dialects in the popular mind, and so are all other taboos. Basically, if you're gonna say fucking, you might as well say it the way it sounds right to you, and for many speakers (including me) the velar is wrong. – John Lawler Nov 23 '14 at 23:32
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    @tchrist Never ever ever in any accent? What about this – Mynamite Nov 23 '14 at 23:47
  • Lot's of people are 'g-droppers'. They tend to drop the 'g' (which really is not there at all, just convert the velar nasal to a dental nasal). In AmE it is a a rural, AAVE, or informal variety that does this (Sarah Palin is famous for doin' this). In BrE, even 'anything' gets g-dropped in some varieties. – Mitch Nov 23 '14 at 23:52
  • Also related: http://english.stackexchange.com/q/87004 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/202355 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/109754 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/36905 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/84177 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/14664 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/8883 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/181862 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/5252 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/36188 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/31999 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/74458 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/26242 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/34568 – tchrist Nov 24 '14 at 00:47
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    @tchrist There are dialects (Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Stoke-on-Trent according to Wikipedia) as well as idiolects where -ing is realised as [-ɪŋɡ], obviously especially in slower or careful speech. This also extends to wrong [ɹʷɔŋɡ], etc. Not an easy thing to Google for, but there’s this comment from John Wells on his blog to back it up. It is real and part of some dialects. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 24 '14 at 01:27
  • @JanusBahsJacquet I do tend to trust John Wells. I have never heard it, and producing it feels very odd. It seems like it would be like not assimilating the nasal, like saying sing as though it were seen-gah. That’s a bit of exaggeration, but not much. – tchrist Nov 24 '14 at 01:30
  • @tchrist I find it much odder when I hear the occasional American do it (perhaps exactly because it’s so rare in AmE) than in BrE, where there are more representatives of those dialects. If you’ve ever watched Party of Five, take note of how Claudia (played by Lacey Chabert) pronounces it. She often has an audible /ɡ/ that sounds quite affected to me. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 24 '14 at 01:35
  • @tchrist Okay, not a very good or clear example, but the best a quick YouTube search yielded: [“I just don’t feel like going” at 2:02] has a somewhat audible /ɡ/, at least. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 24 '14 at 01:46
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    @JanusBahsJacquet Linky linky? – tchrist Nov 24 '14 at 03:33
  • @tchrist when you put the g between slashes you would normally be referring to the "underlying representation". So the word long is taught in first-year phonology courses to have underlying form /long/ (where the vowel tends to vary by instructor's preference) and then a pronounced (or "surface") form [lɑŋ]. –  Nov 24 '14 at 04:06
  • @tchrist Oops! I swear I saw that link show up last night... Here it is: http://youtu.be/D7qBgTJpDDo (start around 1:55). – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 24 '14 at 09:00
  • @JohnLawler: I usually hear it pronounced fucking when someone really wants to place particular emphasis on the word. ("That is just fucking wonderful" as opposed to, say, "Fuckin'-A, man!" – Robusto Nov 24 '14 at 10:00
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    @Robusto: Yes, in many speech groups precise articulation is taken as a sign of extreme self-control, which is extended to temper control metaphorically. The result is a message of "I'm at the end of my tether". – John Lawler Nov 24 '14 at 16:34

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"Fucking" would have less impact if pronounced correctly in so called "Queen's English", which is associated with formal speech. Where it is not usually part of a person's pronunciation, and speaker will sometimes consciously change "ing" to "en" or "un" to affect an accent more strongly associated with profane language.

Popular media / actors know this, so they also pronounce it in that way - and this is what you are hearing in films and T.V. shows. Arguably, this exposes native speakers to the pronunciation and teaches them to pronounce it that way in a feedback loop.

That is not to say people do not pronounce "Fucking" with an "ing" ending. Many people do.

Glorfindel
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