Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 June 4

= June 4 =

Words ending in -eng
How come -ang, -ing, -ong, and -ung are common endings of one-syllable words in English but -eng is rare?? Georgia guy (talk) 01:38, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Why not? --184.145.50.201 (talk) 04:07, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
 * This could be helpful, most entries seem unusual. E should be otherwise the most common letter in English (oftn mute). Not sure how much the linked site can be trusted for this kind of things, but assuming it's true this may have more to do with spelling than phonetics and making a clear distinction between the two is surely useful. Personuser (talk) 05:12, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The participle/gerund ending -ing makes this a favourite, but even with monosyllabic words the difference is already pronounced. Pronunciation should in all cases be versus . Wiktionary lists only four monosyllabic -eng words: cheng (alternative spelling of sheng, a loanword from Mandarin), kreng, meng and sheng. In contrast, 28 monosyllabic -ing words are listed: bing, bring, ching, cling, ding, fling, ging, hing, ing, jing, king, ling, ming, ping, ring, sing, sling, spring, sting, string, swing, thing, thring, ting, whing, wing, wring, zing.  --Lambiam 10:52, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Also bling. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:55, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
 * /usr/share/dict/words on my computer also has beng, teng, dreng, steng, spreng, streng for whatever that's worth. I have no idea what any of these mean. —Tamfang (talk) 01:55, 6 June 2021 (UTC)


 * /e/ raised to /i/ before nasals in late Proto-Germanic, and as a result, you won't find any terms inherited from Proto-Germanic with -eng. Here's a rule from Zukoff (2017), p. 134:
 * /e/ > [i] /_N{C,#}
 * Orcaguy | Write me | Mon œuvre 17:06, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
 * But words ending in em or en are quite common. Georgia guy (talk) 17:29, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Send and bend seem both to come from Proto-Germanic /a/. -enk# also has a similar rarity, probably this isn't even limited to one-syllable words or stressed syllables. Given how many loan worlds exist in English and what the vocalism has gone through, I would search for something more recent (nasals are well known troublemakers). In some similar worlds velars would undergo palatalisation (e.g. bench), not sure if this would always be the case. Personuser (talk) 21:24, 4 June 2021 (UTC)