ñ and gn in English
English has this rare sound, not exclusive to loan words which I don't think anyone has truelly documented. This is the "ny" sound.
It is easiest to recognize this sound from the foreign letters ⟨ñ⟩ and ⟨gn⟩ as in Jalapeño (Spanish) and Lasagna (Italian).
Obviously both these words have been in the English language long enough so that they are probably no longer considered "loan words"... and prunounciation is in line with English phonology.
I wonder however what exactly is this sound?
Discluding bilingual communities that have the ability to prunounce words as in their original language, [nj] seems to be the culprit.
However.. In such words, is this really the prunounciation? or would it be [nʲ]?
Sure this sound might not look native to English but how easy is it to prunounce [n] and [j] in such positions independantly without merging them into a single phone? Palatization may occur in such positions.
The most significant example would be the, indesputibly English word "new", which I think is prunounced differently from both region to region and speaker to speaker.
[nu]
[nʲu]ᵖᵒˢˢⁱᵇˡʸ
[nju]
[niu]
I think, if speakers prunounce ⟨n⟩ palatized in this position than they may do the same for the foreign letters above.
But I still wonder what exactly this sound may be? [nj] or [nʲ]
Thoughts are welcome.