How to pronounce clown in American English

IPA /klaʊn/ Syllables 1 · klown Stress 1st syllable

KLOWN

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Americans pronounce clown as KLOWN (/klaʊn/). You'll hear it in sentences like "The clown bowed down to the loud crowd".

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Sound by sound

Every sound in "clown".

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.

ow/aʊ/

Start with a dropped jaw and flat tongue. Glide into a relaxed, slightly rounded lip position as the back of the tongue stretches up.

n/n/

Touch the tip or front edge of your tongue to the roof of your mouth behind your teeth. Air flows through your nose.

In real conversation

Hear "clown" in the wild.

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

"The clown bowed down to the loud crowd."

dhuh KLOWN BOWD DOWN tuh dhuh LOWD KROWD

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Questions

Questions people ask about this.

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