How to pronounce floats in American English

IPA /floʊts/ Syllables 1 · flohts Stress 1st syllable

FLOHTS

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Americans pronounce floats as FLOHTS (/floʊts/). You'll hear it in sentences like "The boat floats slowly".

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Sound by sound

Every sound in "floats".

1 syllable, 5 sounds. Explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.

f/f/

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

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.

oh/oʊ/

Start with your mouth slightly open, then close your jaw slightly as your lips round. Shift your tongue back slightly, then stretch the back up.

t/t/

Touch the tip or front edge of your tongue to the roof of your mouth just behind your teeth. Keep your jaw relaxed. Stop the air, then release with a puff.

s/s/

Place your tongue tip near the roof of your mouth behind your top teeth. Push air through the narrow gap. No voicing.

In real conversation

Hear "floats" in the wild.

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

"The boat floats slowly."

dhuh BOHT FLOHTS SLOH·lee

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Questions

Questions people ask about this.

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