-ing - Etymology and Pronunciation

Etymology and Pronunciation

The Modern English -ing ending, which is used to form both gerunds and present participles of verbs (i.e. in noun and adjective uses), derives from two different historical suffixes. The gerund (noun) use comes from Middle English -ing, which is from Old English -ing, -ung (suffixes forming nouns from verbs). These in turn are from Proto-Germanic *-ingō, *-ungō, which come from Proto-Indo-European *-enkw-. This use of English -ing is thus cognate with the -ing suffix of Dutch, West Frisian, and the North Germanic languages, and with German -ung.

The -ing of Modern English in its participial (adjectival) use comes from Middle English -inge, -ynge, alterations of earlier -inde, -ende, -and, from the Old English present participle ending -ende. This is from from Proto-Germanic *-andz, from the Proto-Indo-European *-nt-. This use of English -ing is cognate with Dutch and German -end, Swedish -ande, -ende, Latin -ans, -ant-, Ancient Greek -ον (-on), and Sanskrit -ant.

The standard pronunciation of the ending -ing in modern English is "as spelt", namely /ɪŋ/, with a velar nasal consonant (the typical ng sound also found in words like thing and bang). However many dialects use an ordinary n sound instead (an alveolar nasal consonant), with the ending pronounced as /ɪn/ or /ən/. This may be denoted in eye dialect writing with the use of an apostrophe to represent the apparent "missing g"; for example runnin' in place of running. For more detail see g-dropping.