Americans pronounce litigation as lih-tuh-GAY-shuhn (/ˌlɪɾəˈgeɪʃən/). In "litigation", the "t" between vowels sounds like a quick "d" — the tongue briefly taps the ridge behind the upper teeth. This is called the Flap T, a small move that separates 'classroom' from 'native'. It comes out as LIH·tuh·GAY·shuhn. Stress falls on the third syllable — keep everything else short and quick. You'll hear it in sentences like "The company faced class action litigation from dissatisfied customers".
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4 syllables, 9 sounds. Tap a syllable to jump to its row, then explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.
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.
Drop your jaw slightly with relaxed lips. Touch the tongue tip behind the bottom front teeth and arch the top-front toward the roof.
Quickly bounce the front of your tongue against the roof of your mouth. Don't stop the airflow — just a quick tap.
Relax your lips, jaw, and tongue completely. Drop your jaw slightly and keep the tongue neutral.
Raise the back of your tongue to touch the soft palate. Add vocal cord vibration, then release.
Start with your jaw slightly open and the front of your tongue forward and slightly up. Glide upward, your jaw closes a little more and your tongue arches higher toward the roof of the mouth.
Flare your lips and lift the mid-front tongue close to the roof of your mouth. Blow air through without voicing.
Relax your lips, jaw, and tongue completely. Drop your jaw slightly and keep the tongue neutral.
The schwa before N disappears — N becomes the vowel of the syllable. Go straight from the previous consonant to N.
Click any sentence to see the full breakdown — every link, every reduction, every flap-T.
The textbook way isn't wrong — it's just not how anyone actually says it.
In "litigation", the "t" between vowels sounds like a quick "d" — the tongue briefly taps the ridge behind the upper teeth. /t/ or /d/ becomes a quick tap [ɾ] — sounds like a soft D. The tongue briefly taps the ridge behind the upper teeth.
In "litigation", the short unstressed vowel before "n" disappears — the schwa is absorbed and the "n" becomes the syllable nucleus on its own. Schwa is absorbed — consonant becomes the syllable nucleus.
Stress falls on the third syllable, not the others. Stretch GAY — keep everything else short and quick.
Don't pronounce the first syllable too fully. The unstressed syllable reduces to a schwa — the lazy "uh" sound — in casual speech.
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