r/r/
Curl or bunch your tongue without letting the tip touch the roof of your mouth. Brace the sides of your tongue against your upper back teeth, and round your lips slightly.
How to pronounce rent in American English
REHNT
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Americans pronounce rent as REHNT (/rɛnt/). You'll hear it in sentences like "The lease agreement specifies the monthly rent amount" or "The landlord sued the tenant for unpaid rent and damages" — more examples below.
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Sound by sound
Every sound in "rent".
1 syllable, 4 sounds. Explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.
eh/ɛ/
Drop your jaw moderately. Touch the tongue tip behind the bottom front teeth and lift the mid-front part slightly toward the roof.
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/
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.
In real conversation
Hear "rent" in the wild.
Click any sentence to see the full breakdown — every link, every reduction, every flap-T.
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Questions
Questions people ask about this.
Is the American pronunciation of "rent" 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 "REHNT" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.
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