How to pronounce flu in American English

IPA /flu/ Syllables 1 · floo Stress 1st syllable

FLOO

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Americans pronounce flu as FLOO (/flu/). You'll hear it in sentences like "I always get a flu shot before the winter season begins".

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Sound by sound

Every sound in "flu".

1 syllable, 3 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.

oo/u/

Round your lips into a tight circle. Let your tongue rest in the middle of your mouth, slightly raised.

In real conversation

Hear "flu" in the wild.

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

"I always get a flu shot before the winter season begins."

ahy AHL·wayz GEHT uh FLOO SHAHT buh·FOR dhuh WIHN·ter SEE·zuhn buh·GIHNZ

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Questions

Questions people ask about this.

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