How to pronounce broad in American English

IPA /brɑd/ Syllables 1 · brahd Stress 1st syllable

BRAHD

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Americans pronounce broad as BRAHD (/brɑd/). You'll hear it in sentences like "The broad audience sought more caught incidents".

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Sound by sound

Every sound in "broad".

1 syllable, 4 sounds. Explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.

b/b/

Press your lips together, add vocal cord vibration, then release.

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.

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.

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 "broad" in the wild.

Click any sentence to see the full breakdown — every link, every reduction, every flap-T.

"The broad audience sought more caught incidents."

dhuh BRAHD AH·dee·uhns SAHT MOR KAHT IHN·suh·duhnts

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Questions

Questions people ask about this.

Is the American pronunciation of "broad" 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 "BRAHD" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.