h/h/
Push a stream of air from your throat through your open mouth. No tongue or lip contact.
How to pronounce hockey in American English
HAH·kee
Start here
Americans pronounce hockey as HAH-kee (/ˈhɑki/). Stress falls on the first syllable — keep everything else short and quick. You'll hear it in sentences like "The hockey players skated aggressively towards the net".
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Sound by sound
Every sound in "hockey".
2 syllables, 4 sounds. Tap a syllable to jump to its row, then explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.
ah/ɑ/
Relax your lips and drop your jaw significantly. The tongue tip lightly touches behind the bottom front teeth and the back part of the tongue presses down a little to create more dark space in the back of the mouth.
k/k/
Raise the back of your tongue to touch the soft palate (velum). Stop the air, then release.
ee/i/
Pull the corners of your lips back slightly. Arch the middle-front of your tongue high toward the roof of the mouth.
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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 HAH — keep everything else short and quick.
hah·KEE→HAH·kee
Questions
Questions people ask about this.
How is "hockey" stressed in American English?
Stress falls on the first syllable — say "HAH" with a longer, fuller vowel and keep every other syllable short and quick. The respell "HAH-kee" marks the stressed syllable in capitals so the rhythm is easy to read at a glance.
Is the American pronunciation of "hockey" 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 "HAH-kee" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.
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