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I have heard words such as shigoto, sugata, sugu (ni) and they end up sounding
like shimoto, sunata, and sunu ni. Even in sentence such as Haru ga kimasu.
I've heard sound like: Haru na kimasu.

So why is that? Do the Japanese not like the g sound (g as in gorilla)? This
seems to be a everyday spoken, I daresay colloquial, thing. I don't know, so
obviously I'm asking.

Here is a [good
example](http://www3.nhk.or.jp/lesson/english/learn/list/5.html) of what I
mean. If you skip to the 4:00 mark and listen up to the 4:30 mark, you'll hear
(hopefully what I hear) the "different" pronunciations of shigoto.
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learning phonetics
Why does the g tends to sound more like a m or n?
That is actually a valid question. I did some reading and here's what I found
(from Wikipedia):

[Moraic Nasal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology#Moraic_nasal)
[Neutralisation, Archiphoneme and
Underspecification](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archiphoneme#Neutralization.2C_archiphoneme.2C_and_underspecification):

> Some analyses of Japanese treat the moraic nasal as an archiphoneme /N/.
> However, other, less abstract approaches take its uvular citation
> pronunciation as basic, or treat it as a regular coronal /n/. Even when the
> nasal coda is proposed as /N/, it is in a complementary distribution with
> the nasal onsets within a syllable. In any case, it undergoes a variety of
> assimilatory processes. Within words, it is variously:
>
>   * uvular [ɴ] at the end of utterances and in isolation.
>
>   * bilabial [m] before [p], [b] and [m]; this pronunciation is also
> sometimes found at the end of utterances and in isolation. Singers are
> taught to pronounce all final and prevocalic instances of this sound as [m],
> which reflects its historical derivation.
>
>   * dental [n] before coronals /d/, /t/, [ɾ] and [n]; never found utterance-
> finally.
>
>   * **velar [ŋ] before [k] and [ɡ].**
>
>   * [Ṽ] (a nasalized vowel) before vowels, approximants ([j] and [w]), and
> fricatives (/s/, /z/, and /h/). Also found utterance-finally.
>
>

>
> Some speakers produce [n] before /z/, pronouncing them as [ndz], while
> others produce a nasalized vowel before /z/ (see Akamatsu 1997). The
> assimilation occurs beyond word boundaries.
>
> * * *
>
> Phonemes that are contrastive in certain environments may not be contrastive
> in all environments. In the environments where they don't contrast, the
> contrast is said to be neutralized. In English there are three nasal
> phonemes, /m, n, ŋ/, as shown by the minimal triplet,
>
>   * /sʌm/ sum
>
>   * /sʌn/ sun
>
>   * /sʌŋ/ su **ng**
>
>

I think the reason is because in English, we subconsciously group and
distinguish "m", "n", and "ng" but for Japanese, the distinction among them is
not as strict. So it may seem to be entirely different for "English-
conditioned" minds while it's only a little variation for "Japanese-
conditioned" minds.
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**I've heard sound like: Haru na kimasu. So why is that?**

I'm going to be very frank here. I think it's because you're not yet able to
distinguish intervocalic [ŋ] from [n] and [m]. Incidentally, listening to the
passage you link to, I hear [ŋ] in the first, [ɡ] in the second ocurrence of
しごと.

**Do the Japanese not like the g sound (g as in gorilla)?**

It's not that they don't like it. But the fact is that the phone [ɡ] is just
one of the ways that the phoneme /ɡ/ is realized in Japanese. Have a look
[here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology#Weakening). Often
intervocalic /ɡ/ is realized as [ɣ] or [ŋ]. Also, intervocalic /b/ is often
realized as [β], but this might not catch your attention as much, since this
is less likely to cause confusion with other consonants.

If by the first question, you meant to ask why /ɡ/ it is pronounced
differently from [ɡ], one way to answer that would be that [ɣ] or [ŋ] require
less effort to pronounce intervocalically. [ɡ] is a _stop_ , meaning that you
have to stop the airstream while articulating, while [ɣ] or [ŋ] are a
_fricative_ and a _nasal stop_. In the former, the airstream is not stopped
although the channel that the air goes through is made narrower. In the
latter, the air stops going through the mouth and is directed through the
nose.

This phenomenon, known as _weakening_ , happens in other languages as well,
e.g. in Castillian Spanish, where intervocalically (and in certain other
positions) /ɡ/ -> [ɣ], /b/ -> /β/ etc.
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This is not always the cases but I have encountered it. Japan has many
regional dialects and they can speak with a regional accent. What you're
observing is that some with some accents, they pronounce these words (and the
particle が) differently.

> /ɡ/ is nasalized fully to [ŋ]

_This is a feature of dialects in the Tōhoku region_. While they learn
standard Japanese, some of them (especially older people) still speak with a
strong accent.

This nasalized sound is distinct to [n] or [m] (and is not confused with ん by
Japanese speakers) but can be confused with them by English speakers that are
unaccustomed to distinguishing it. This is not specific to Japanese and this
sound is used in other languages including French and Portuguese.
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