Nasal Finals:
- Chinese nasal finals, also known as nasal codas or nasal endings, are a type of final sound characterized by the presence of a nasal consonant.
- In Mandarin Chinese, there are three nasal finals: -an, -ang, and -en.
- These finals are formed by combining the nasal consonants (m, n, or ng) with the corresponding vowel sounds.
Tips for the “an” sound:
“an” has the sound of “ahn”, between the “an” in “can” and the “on” in “con”.
Tips for the “en” sound:
“en” sounds like “un” as in “run”, as in “en” in “chicken”.
Tips for the “ang” sound:
“ang” sounds like “ahng”, with “a” as in “father” and “ng” as in “song”. (It starts with the vowel sound in father and ends in the velar nasal, similar to song in some dialects of American English.)
Tips for the “eng” sound:
“eng” has the sound of “ung” as in “hung” and “lung”.
Tips for the “ong” sound:
- “ong” starts with the vowel sound in “book” and ends with the velar nasal sound in “sing”.
- It varies between [oŋ] and [uŋ] depending on the speaker.