Uh, no. The first says ran-ng [ræŋ] while the other says rain-ng [reŋ].
And this is exactly what I suspected was happening, now that I see the thread again. We’re both hearing the same pronunciation, but we interpret it differently.
It’s similar to how some people think the -y at the end of words sounds like the same vowel as in the word “bit,” while others think it sounds like the same vowel as in “beet.” We pronounce the words the same way, but we can’t agree on the actual sound we are making.
I wish I still had a working microphone so you could hear what I think ran-ng [ræŋ] sounds like in my accent.
Forgot to mention: I realize that both are nasalized, and that others have already explained the allophone idea. But I still say the sound itself is closer to [reŋ], because I can say [ræŋ] differently. While I can also say [reIŋ], [e] and [eI] are more often considered the same vowel than [e] and [æ].
There is definite vowel tensing in rang as opposed to rat.
This is also one case where it is really difficult to avoid using IPA, and I like to make sure everyone can understand me. So I’ll just tell you what each sound means. [e] is the sound made by the Spanish e. It’s like the English, ai sound, but it has not diphthong, no Y or EE sound at the end. [eI] is the normal English ai sound, as in raid. [æ] is what is usually called the short A, as in cat, bat, mat, fat, etc. [ŋ] is the ng sound, but without the hard G at the end. And, in this case, I’m using a convention to use [r] for the regular American R sound, rather than it’s usual meaning of a rolled-R. This is used a lot in American English transcriptions.