uh/ʌ/
Relax your lips, jaw, and tongue completely. Drop your jaw slightly and keep the tongue neutral.
How to pronounce alive in American English
uh·LAHYV
Start here
Americans pronounce alive as uh-LAHYV (/əˈlaɪv/). Stress falls on the second syllable — keep everything else short and quick. You'll hear it in sentences like "The drive to survive keeps the mind alive" or "The pilot kept the plane alive until they could arrive" — more examples below.
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Sound by sound
Every sound in "alive".
2 syllables, 4 sounds. Tap a syllable to jump to its row, then explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.
l/l/
Place the tip of your tongue against the alveolar ridge just behind your top front teeth, the same contact point as /t/, /d/, and /n/. The difference is what happens to the air: for /l/, you let it flow continuously around the <em>sides</em> of the tongue (that's why /l/ is called a lateral). Turn your voice on the whole time. Lips stay relaxed, no rounding or flaring. For the Dark L variant at the end of a syllable, also pull the back of the tongue up and back toward the soft palate.
ahy/aɪ/
Start with your jaw open wide and your tongue resting low and flat. Glide the front of your tongue up toward the roof of your mouth as your jaw closes halfway.
v/v/
Lift your bottom lip so its inner edge (where the wet part meets the dry part) touches the very bottom of your top front teeth. Add vocal cord vibration as you blow air through.
In real conversation
Hear "alive" in the wild.
Click any sentence to see the full breakdown — every link, every reduction, every flap-T.
"He was barely alive when the right medicine began to work."
hee wuhz BAIR·lee uh·LAHYV wehn dhuh RAHYT MEH·duh·suhn buh·GAN tuh WURK
"The drive to survive keeps the mind alive."
dhuh DRAHYV tuh ser·VAHYV KEEPS dhuh MAHYND uh·LAHYV
"The pilot kept the plane alive until they could arrive."
dhuh PAHY·luht KEHPT dhuh PLAYN uh·LAHYV uhn·TIHL dhay kuud uh·RAHYV
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Watch out
Common pronunciation mistakes in American English.
The textbook way isn't wrong — it's just not how anyone actually says it.
01
Stressing the wrong syllable.
Stress falls on the second syllable, not the others. Stretch LAHYV — keep everything else short and quick.
UH·lahyv→uh·LAHYV
02
Pronouncing the first syllable too fully.
Don't pronounce the first syllable too fully. The unstressed syllable reduces to a schwa — the lazy "uh" sound — in casual speech.
UH·LAHYV→uh·LAHYV
Questions
Questions people ask about this.
How is "alive" stressed in American English?
Stress falls on the second syllable — say "LAHYV" with a longer, fuller vowel and keep every other syllable short and quick. The respell "uh-LAHYV" marks the stressed syllable in capitals so the rhythm is easy to read at a glance.
Why does the first syllable in "alive" reduce to "uh"?
Unstressed syllables in American English collapse toward a schwa — a lazy, neutral "uh" sound. The full vowel is what textbooks teach, but in actual American speech every unstressed vowel reduces. The respell "uh-LAHYV" shows the reduced form so you can hear the casual rhythm directly.
Is the American pronunciation of "alive" different from British English?
American English uses different vowel shapes, a relaxed retroflex R, and connected-speech tricks like flap-T and glottal-stop T that British Received Pronunciation generally avoids. The respell "uh-LAHYV" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.
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