How to pronounce cliff in American English

IPA /klɪf/ Syllables 1 · klihf Stress 1st syllable

KLIHF

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Americans pronounce cliff as KLIHF (/klɪf/). You'll hear it in sentences like "The waterfall cascades down the side of the cliff" or "The cliff offers a breathtaking view of the ocean below" — more examples below.

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Sound by sound

Every sound in "cliff".

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

k/k/

Raise the back of your tongue to touch the soft palate (velum). Stop the air, then release.

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.

ih/ɪ/

Drop your jaw slightly with relaxed lips. Touch the tongue tip behind the bottom front teeth and arch the top-front toward the roof.

f/f/

Lift your bottom lip to touch the very bottom of your top front teeth. Blow air through this contact point without voicing.

In real conversation

Hear "cliff" in the wild.

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

"The cliff offers a breathtaking view of the ocean below."

dhuh KLIHF AH·ferz uh BREHTH·tay·kuhng VYOO uhv dhee OH·shuhn buh·LOH

"The waterfall cascades down the side of the cliff."

dhuh WAH·der·fahl ka·SKAYDZ DOWN dhuh SAHYD uhv dhuh KLIHF

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Questions

Questions people ask about this.

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