Pronunciation of G and Z/J.

[Destruction_Song]

I've heard the "g" sound not pronounced as a hard "g" but more like "ng." And the z/j sound like "zh" ,"j" or "z". I was wondering if the pronunciation affects the word or the word affects the pronunciation or it's just some weird personal thing that the speaker affects.

[Sairana]

Nasalization of the 'g' phoneme into something closer to 'ng' is situational. Some do it all of the time, some never do, and some do it for certain words and/or letter combinations.

'z' is more difficult. it's not exactly the same as the english 'z', and rather difficult to describe, IMHO. However, the Japanese ear, I am told, cannot distinguish the Japanese 'z' from the English 'z' anyway.