h/h/
Push a stream of air from your throat through your open mouth. No tongue or lip contact.
How to pronounce hostage in American English
HAH·stuhj
Start here
Americans pronounce hostage as HAH-stuhj (/ˈhɑstədʒ/). Stress falls on the first syllable — keep everything else short and quick. You'll hear it in sentences like "The SWAT team was called to handle the hostage situation".
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Sound by sound
Every sound in "hostage".
2 syllables, 6 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.
s/s/
Place your tongue tip near the roof of your mouth behind your top teeth. Push air through the narrow gap. No voicing.
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.
uh/ʌ/
Relax your lips, jaw, and tongue completely. Drop your jaw slightly and keep the tongue neutral.
j/dʒ/
Touch the front of your tongue to the roof of your mouth, then release into a 'zh' position. Add vocal cord vibration.
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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·STUHJ→HAH·stuhj
02
Pronouncing the unstressed syllable too fully.
Don't pronounce the first syllable too fully. The unstressed syllable reduces to a schwa — the lazy "uh" sound — in casual speech.
HAH·STUHJ→HAH·stuhj
Questions
Questions people ask about this.
How is "hostage" 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-stuhj" marks the stressed syllable in capitals so the rhythm is easy to read at a glance.
Why does the second syllable in "hostage" reduce to "uh"?
Unstressed syllables in American English collapse toward a schwa — a lazy, neutral "uh" sound. The full vowel is what textbooks teach, but in actual American speech every unstressed vowel reduces. The respell "HAH-stuhj" shows the reduced form so you can hear the casual rhythm directly.
Is the American pronunciation of "hostage" 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-stuhj" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.
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