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 fireplace in American English
FAHY·er·plays
Start here
Americans pronounce fireplace as FAHY-er-plays (/ˈfaɪərˌpleɪs/). Stress falls on the first syllable — keep everything else short and quick. You'll hear it in sentences like "She hung new pictures on the wall above the fireplace".
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Sound by sound
Every sound in "fireplace".
3 syllables, 7 sounds. Tap a syllable to jump to its row, then explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.
ahy/aɪ/
Start with your jaw open wide and your tongue resting low and flat. Glide the front of your tongue up toward the roof of your mouth as your jaw closes halfway.
er/ər/
Relax your mouth and lift the tongue back and up. Keep the lips neutral.
p/p/
Press your lips together to stop the air, then release. No vocal cord vibration.
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.
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.
s/s/
Place your tongue tip near the roof of your mouth behind your top teeth. Push air through the narrow gap. No voicing.
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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 FAHY — keep everything else short and quick.
fahy·ER·PLAYS→FAHY·er·PLAYS
02
Pronouncing the "R" too clearly.
Americans use a relaxed retroflex R — the tongue curls back rather than rolling. The R is one continuous sound with the vowel before it, not two separate sounds.
… (no R)→… r (curl the tongue)
Questions
Questions people ask about this.
How is "fireplace" stressed in American English?
Stress falls on the first syllable — say "FAHY" with a longer, fuller vowel and keep every other syllable short and quick. The respell "FAHY-er-plays" marks the stressed syllable in capitals so the rhythm is easy to read at a glance.
How do I pronounce the R in "fireplace"?
Americans use a relaxed retroflex R: the tongue curls back rather than rolling, and the R is one continuous sound with the vowel before it — not two separate sounds. Don't try to pronounce a separate vowel followed by a separate R. Treat them as a single shape.
Is the American pronunciation of "fireplace" 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 "FAHY-er-plays" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.
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