h/h/
Push a stream of air from your throat through your open mouth. No tongue or lip contact.
How to pronounce hotly in American English
HAHT·lee
Start here
Americans pronounce hotly as HAHT-lee (/ˈhɑtli/). Stress falls on the first syllable — keep everything else short and quick. You'll hear it in sentences like "Immigration policy reform continues to be hotly debated".
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Sound by sound
Every sound in "hotly".
2 syllables, 5 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.
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.
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.
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
Releasing the final consonant with a puff of air.
In "hotly", the "t" is not released — the articulators get into position but hold without the burst of air. Air stops but there's no release burst — the articulators hold position.
hotly→HAHT·lee
02
Stressing the wrong syllable.
Stress falls on the first syllable, not the others. Stretch HAHT — keep everything else short and quick.
haht·LEE→HAHT·lee
Questions
Questions people ask about this.
How is "hotly" stressed in American English?
Stress falls on the first syllable — say "HAHT" with a longer, fuller vowel and keep every other syllable short and quick. The respell "HAHT-lee" marks the stressed syllable in capitals so the rhythm is easy to read at a glance.
Is the American pronunciation of "hotly" 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 "HAHT-lee" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.
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