n

The phoneme /n/ is pronounced in the same way in English and Spanish, so it doesn’t give any trouble.

 

n (alveolar, nasal, voiced)

Spelling: n (now, net), ne (phone, nine), nn (dinner, channel), kn (knife, knot), gn (sign, gnat). Exceptional spelling: pn (pneumatic)

As it happened with the /m/, the sound /n/ is very simple: do it as you do it in Spanish. Only, here again, it’s interesting to have a look at the spelling because some consonants become silent when they come next to an n.

Remember three cases where you only have to pronounce an /n/.

1. When the n is doubled.

sound_loud_speaker dinner

2. When a word starts with the consonants kn.

sound_loud_speaker knife

3. When you find gn at the beginning or end of words.

sound_loud_speaker gnat      sound_loud_speaker resign

 

And here you have a native speaker pronouncing the phoneme /n/ several times.

sound_loud_speaker No, I do not think you are innocent, I do not believe you are innocent, I know you are innocent (Julian Barnes, Kusp).

 

This is the type of work I do with my students in my one-to-one classes. I make them practise these processes with exercises until they improve their comprehension of native speakers and are capable of speaking like that themselves. If you are interested in my classes, you can contact me here.

 

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