Tongue (noun) refers to the muscular organ in the mouth used for tasting, swallowing, and articulating speech. It also denotes a projecting portion of something that resembles a tongue, and in idiomatic use, a person’s native language or treacherous rumor (on the tongue of gossip). In linguistics, it describes the active organ involved in shaping sounds.
"- She burned her tongue on the hot soup."
"- The cat flicked its tongue as it lapped up the milk."
"- He speaks with a native tongue of French, despite living here for years."
"- His tongue is sharp; he often shoots off biting remarks."
Tongue comes from Old English tunge, cognate with Old High German zunga and Old Norse tunga. It ultimately derives from Proto-Germanic *tungō, from the Proto-Indo-European root *dhengh-, meaning “to bend, twist.” The word’s earliest senses centered on the anatomical organ and the projecting part of objects (e.g., a tongue of flame or a projecting point). By medieval times, tongue broadened to metaphorical uses like language and speech (the tongue as the organ of speech). The term appears in various Germanic languages with parallel forms long before it entered modern English, retaining its basic sense of a muscular, flexible extension used for taste, texture, and articulation. In anatomy, the tongue is described as a muscular hydrostat with intrinsic and extrinsic muscles, capable of precise movements; this biological understanding has shaped the word’s specialized senses in linguistics and phonetics. First known written use in English dates to before the 9th century, with continued evolution through Middle English. By the early modern period, idiomatic expressions (tongue-tied, tongue-in-cheek) further entrenched its figurative significance in culture and rhetoric.
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Words that rhyme with "Tongue"
-ung sounds
Practice with these rhyming pairs to improve your pronunciation consistency:
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Tongue is pronounced with the stressed syllable on the single-syllable word: /ˈtʌŋ/. The tongue is a single, closed syllable with a short, open-mid vowel /ʌ/ (as in 'cup'), followed by the velar nasal /ŋ/ as in 'sing'. There is no final hard 'g' sound; the velar nasal takes the place of a consonant cluster. Practically, raise the body of the tongue toward the soft palate to produce the nasal, keeping the tip behind the upper teeth. See audio examples in Pronounce or Forvo for native-like accuracy.
Common errors include: 1) mistakenly converting /ŋ/ to /ŋg/ or pronouncing a hard 'g' at the end; 2) misplacing the tongue so you produce /t/ or /d/ with a t-d audio rather than a clean alveolar stop followed by the nasal; 3) using a lax, reduced vowel instead of /ʌ/. Correction tips: keep the /ŋ/ as a pure velar nasal without following glottal closure, ensure the tongue tip lightly touches the alveolar ridge just behind the upper front teeth, and relax the jaw to maintain /ʌ/ rather than a schwa. Practice with minimal pairs: tongue vs tong—note the final nasal quality and mouth openness.
In US/UK/AU English, /ˈtʌŋ/ remains rhotic-neutral as a single syllable. The main difference is vowel quality: US /ʌ/ tends to be a more central but open-mid vowel; UK and AU may present a slightly more centralized or rounded quality depending on accent region, with a subtle difference in length and mouth openness. The /ŋ/ consonant is consistent across these accents. Stress remains on the only syllable, unaffected by regional variation. Listen to native speakers from each region to hear minor timbre shifts in /ʌ/ and overall vowel height.
The difficulty often lies in producing a clean /ʌ/ vowel sequence followed immediately by the velar nasal /ŋ/ without inserting extra vowel or a final /g/. It’s easy to misarticulate by adding a hard 'g' or turning /ŋ/ into /n/ or /ŋk/. Also, the alveolar contact must be precise for the transition from the alveolar stop /t/ to the nasal /ŋ/: avoid a full stop-like separation or an overly tense jaw. Focus on a smooth glide from /t/ into the /ʌ/ vowel toward the velar area, then settle into /ŋ/ as the soft palate elevates.
There is no silent letter in the standard pronunciation of 'tongue' in modern English. The letters t-o-n-g-u-e together yield the single-syllable /ˈtʌŋ/. Some learners imagine a silent 'e' at the end, but in pronunciation the 'e' is not separately sounded; instead, it participates in molding the vowel quality. Focus on the /t/ + /ʌ/ + /ŋ/ sequence; the 'e' is not silent in history; it’s part of the spelling that yields the single-syllable pronunciation.
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