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 flare in American English
FLAIR
Start here
Americans pronounce flare as FLAIR (/flɛr/). You'll hear it in sentences like "Stare at the glare of the square flare" or "The pollen from the flowers caused his allergies to flare up" — more examples below.
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Sound by sound
Every sound in "flare".
1 syllable, 3 sounds. Explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.
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.
air/ɛr/
Start with the 'eh' vowel mouth position. Pull the tongue back and up while flaring the lips for the 'r'.
In real conversation
Hear "flare" in the wild.
Click any sentence to see the full breakdown — every link, every reduction, every flap-T.
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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
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 do I pronounce the R in "flare"?
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 "flare" 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 "FLAIR" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.
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