h/h/
Push a stream of air from your throat through your open mouth. No tongue or lip contact.
How to pronounce hunts in American English
HUHNTS
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Americans pronounce hunts as HUHNTS (/hʌnts/). In "hunts", the "t" is squeezed between other consonants and drops out — the surrounding consonants flow together without it — most natural in flowing, casual speech; in careful or formal speech, the T may be lightly present. This is called the Silent T in Clusters, and it's one of the defining features of casual American English. It comes out as HUHNTS. You'll hear it in sentences like "The owl hoots at night and hunts for small rodents" or "She collects vinyl records and hunts for rare albums" — more examples below.
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Sound by sound
Every sound in "hunts".
1 syllable, 5 sounds. Explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.
uh/ʌ/
Relax your lips, jaw, and tongue completely. Drop your jaw slightly and keep the tongue neutral.
n/n/
Touch the tip or front edge of your tongue to the roof of your mouth behind your teeth. Air flows through your nose.
t/t/
DroppedThe T is skipped entirely. Your tongue doesn't make contact at the T position.
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 "hunts" in the wild.
Click any sentence to see the full breakdown — every link, every reduction, every flap-T.
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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
Pronouncing the T in a consonant cluster.
In "hunts", the "t" is squeezed between other consonants and drops out — the surrounding consonants flow together without it — most natural in flowing, casual speech; in careful or formal speech, the T may be lightly present. /t/ is dropped entirely — the surrounding consonants flow together without the T.
hunts→HUHNTS
Questions
Questions people ask about this.
Is the American pronunciation of "hunts" 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 "HUHNTS" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.
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