b/b/
Press your lips together, add vocal cord vibration, then release.
How to pronounce borrowed in American English
BAH·rohd
Start here
Americans pronounce borrowed as BAH-rohd (/ˈbɑroʊd/). Stress falls on the first syllable — keep everything else short and quick. You'll hear it in sentences like "She borrowed a pen from her classmate during the pop quiz" or "She borrowed a stack of biographies from the public library" — more examples below.
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Sound by sound
Every sound in "borrowed".
2 syllables, 5 sounds. Tap a syllable to jump to its row, then explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.
ah/ɑ/
Relax your lips and drop your jaw significantly. The tongue tip lightly touches behind the bottom front teeth and the back part of the tongue presses down a little to create more dark space in the back of the mouth.
r/r/
Curl or bunch your tongue without letting the tip touch the roof of your mouth. Brace the sides of your tongue against your upper back teeth, and round your lips slightly.
oh/oʊ/
Start with your mouth slightly open, then close your jaw slightly as your lips round. Shift your tongue back slightly, then stretch the back up.
d/d/
Touch the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth just behind your teeth. Add vocal cord vibration as you release.
In real conversation
Hear "borrowed" in the wild.
Click any sentence to see the full breakdown — every link, every reduction, every flap-T.
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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 first syllable, not the others. Stretch BAH — keep everything else short and quick.
bah·ROHD→BAH·rohd
Questions
Questions people ask about this.
How is "borrowed" stressed in American English?
Stress falls on the first syllable — say "BAH" with a longer, fuller vowel and keep every other syllable short and quick. The respell "BAH-rohd" marks the stressed syllable in capitals so the rhythm is easy to read at a glance.
Is the American pronunciation of "borrowed" 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 "BAH-rohd" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.
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