Pronunciation of 'g' sound in Japanese
 

I am just beginning to try to learn some Japanese. I have looked at various books, some of which suggest that the 'g' in Japanese is always pronounced like the hard 'g' in the English word 'egg', but others seem to contradict that and say that, in the middle of words (as in, well, tamago) it is more like 'ng' in the English word 'long'.

Is it a regional thing, perhaps? Or does it depend on where in a word the 'g' appears? Or, perhaps, as I suspect, rather more complicated than either of those...?

The "G" is always a hard sound, like in egg.

Thanks, MMM! That's music to my ears. Simple.

It is always a hard g, but the 'ng' sound is hard. There's less 'n' than in long, but...ah, it's hard to explain. If you just always use a plain g, that's fine, no one will call you out for it. But if you ever move to Japan or just speak to enough Japanese speakers, you'll eventually pick up that in some words, there's a definite 'n' influence.

From the listening exercises that I've done, I can say that sometimes there's enough 'n' to trip you up. If I'm not really familiar with a word, sometimes I can't tell if they're saying 'g' or 'n'.

I admit that the "g" sound puzzles me alot in Japanese. I watch alot of Japanese TV and listen to alot of Japanese music and many times the particle I know it is "ga" coz it marks the subject sounds way too close to "na"...and that my misunderstanding of the "g" messes me up also with regular words.
Another particle that used to mess me up is the direct object one (o). Depending on the final sound of the word before it, it can sound like a wo.

But when it is not you language it is easy to hear wrong sounds trust me. I have a guy who is trying to learn Italian asking me for some help. He can't hear the sound of vowels ending a word when the next word starts with a vowel...while I (being Italian) can hear them pretty clear.

I agree with chryuop completely.

Sometimes.. ga is pronoucned like gnaw.. that was in an old video though..

I hear they rewrote the standards for the language in the 80's or something?

Thanks, all. It makes it difficult knowing no Japanese speakers and having no access to Japanese radio or television. I have a few language CDs, but that's not quite the same.

Same thing with writing practice. If I write a few hiragana, they might look pretty good to me, but like total crap to a Japanese person.

If i'm having a hard time finding something to listen to i always go to www.fnn-news.com: and listen to the news on there, just hit the play all button and away you go :)

Wow thanks for that! a bit of AJATT for us all :P (oo, I managed an acronym! woop) I was going to suggest that sushidushi listen to Japanesepod101.com as thier lessons are of a very casual, real life tone. It cant be so bad as its the backbone for about 90% of my knowledge! One lesson a day (10-20mins) helps me keep up with the bigboys here :)

Well.. it helps anyways :p

Really? I did some listening exercises a while back and they said that sometimes when the "g" is in the middle of the word, it has an "ng" sound like in "sing." Do they not use that pronunciation in Japan?