f/f/
Lift your bottom lip to touch the very bottom of your top front teeth. Blow air through this contact point without voicing.
How to pronounce failing in American English
FAY·luhng
Start here
Americans pronounce failing as FAY-luhng (/ˈfeɪləŋ/). Stress falls on the first syllable — keep everything else short and quick. You'll hear it in sentences like "He breached the contract by failing to deliver the goods on time".
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Sound by sound
Every sound in "failing".
2 syllables, 5 sounds. Tap a syllable to jump to its row, then explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.
ay/eɪ/
Start with your jaw slightly open and the front of your tongue forward and slightly up. Glide upward, your jaw closes a little more and your tongue arches higher toward the roof of the mouth.
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.
uh/ʌ/
Relax your lips, jaw, and tongue completely. Drop your jaw slightly and keep the tongue neutral.
ng/ŋ/
Lift the back of your tongue to the soft palate. Lower your soft palate to let air flow through your nose.
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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 FAY — keep everything else short and quick.
fay·LUHNG→FAY·luhng
02
Pronouncing the unstressed 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.
FAY·LUHNG→FAY·luhng
Questions
Questions people ask about this.
How is "failing" stressed in American English?
Stress falls on the first syllable — say "FAY" with a longer, fuller vowel and keep every other syllable short and quick. The respell "FAY-luhng" marks the stressed syllable in capitals so the rhythm is easy to read at a glance.
Why does the second syllable in "failing" 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 "FAY-luhng" shows the reduced form so you can hear the casual rhythm directly.
Is the American pronunciation of "failing" 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 "FAY-luhng" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.
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