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I've started working with the AngularJS web development framework, and the first question in their FAQ is this:

Why is this project called "AngularJS"? Why is the namespace called "ng"?
Because HTML has Angular brackets and "ng" sounds like "Angular".

To me, "ng" doesn't sound anything like "Angular". Is this a regional thing, or are these people just mad?

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    With with exception of some Vietnamese surnames (where it is typically anglicized as "Eng"), I've never seen "ng" as a stand-alone phoneme, so I don't know "how ng sounds". That said, my instinct would be to pronounce it as it is pronounced in angular, sans the a (or, equivalently, as in the suffix -ing, sans the i).
    – Dan Bron
    Feb 24, 2015 at 17:46
  • Because Angular's approach is no good.
    – Robusto
    Feb 24, 2015 at 17:52
  • Generally, uncompounded NG letter combinations in English are pronounced either as the velar nasal phoneme /ŋ/, as in singer /'sɪŋər/, or as the velar nasal-stop cluster /ŋɡ/ as in finger /'fɪŋɡər/. Note that it looks like they rhyme, but in fact they don't.
    – John Lawler
    Feb 24, 2015 at 18:01
  • @JohnLawler: I don't know if you're versed in Vietnamese, but if you are I'm curious about what their "ng" sound really is. When Vietnamese people pronounce names like Nguyen it sounds to my ear like the barest hint of ng followed by w.
    – Robusto
    Feb 24, 2015 at 18:13
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    @Robusto. Nguyễn (thus the correct spelling) has an initial consonant /ŋ/, an /u/ on-glide, main vowel /i/, /ɜ/ off-glide, final consonant /n/, and a dipping, strangulated tone.
    – fdb
    Feb 24, 2015 at 18:30

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It's poorly worded in the FAQ. What they mean is just that they've used the first two consonant sounds in "Angular" as the prefix for their codes.

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  • This would be my guess, too. A better (assuming it'd be correct) answer might be, We named it Angular after the angular brackets used in HTML. We pronounce ng like ang in angular.
    – Jim Reynolds
    Feb 24, 2015 at 19:09

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