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Why are English words ending with -ing often transcribed with ング? For example, timing = タイミング, morning = モーニング, and diving = ダイビング. My guess is that グ is formally pronounced with 鼻濁音｛びだくおん｝ , i.e. pronounced like /ŋu/. Therefore, is this the case?

xuq01
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    [この回答](http://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/26238/9831)によると、`Use the non-nasal for ガ行 syllables in non-Sino loanwords.「ポイントゲッター」、「オルガン」、「エゴ」, etc.`だそうですよ – Chocolate Feb 06 '17 at 06:03

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You're on the right track, but a little off.

When a language borrows a word from another language, it has two choices: drop the sounds that don't exist in their language, or add sounds to preserve the original pronunciation.

Japanese is a language that tends to try to preserve the pronunciation.

So, グ will not be pronounced as /ŋu/. However, /n/ becomes /ŋ/ before /g/. But since /g/ in isolation isn't possible in Japanese, they employ /gu/ (グ), in order to force the /ŋ/ pronunciation of ん.

So the phonemic /n.gu/ is rendered phonetically as /ŋ.gu/.

This sound cluster also exists outside of English borrowings:

天満宮（てんまんぐう） /ten.maŋ.gu/

漫画（まんが） /maŋ.ga/

Seralt
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    でも・・・「まんが」の「が」は鼻濁音になりますが、「モーニング」「ダイビング」の「グ」は鼻濁音になりませんよね・・・ – Chocolate Feb 06 '17 at 06:00
  • え？「まんが」は /maŋ.ŋa/ の発音ですか？鼻濁音の「が」はなくなっている方言の気がしますが… – Seralt Feb 06 '17 at 06:04
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    Possibly the most extreme case is the (common in South-East Asia) surname "Ng". The obvious transliteration is ング, but since ン generally doesn't appear at the start of words some computer systems will throw an error if you try to enter it as a name. My wife was asked if she was ok with her resident card naming her as グさん, or possibly イングさん, neither of which she was particularly happy with. – ConMan Feb 06 '17 at 06:07