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 roads in American English
ROHDZ
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Americans pronounce roads as ROHDZ (/roʊdz/). You'll hear it in sentences like "Because of the rain, the roads are slick" or "He drove carefully because the roads were slippery from the rain" — more examples below.
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Sound by sound
Every sound in "roads".
1 syllable, 4 sounds. Explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.
oh/oʊ/
Start with your mouth slightly open, then close your jaw slightly as your lips round. Shift your tongue back slightly, then stretch the back up.
d/d/
Touch the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth just behind your teeth. Add vocal cord vibration as you release.
z/z/
Same position as S, but add vocal cord vibration. Feel the buzz.
In real conversation
Hear "roads" 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 "roads" 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 "ROHDZ" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.
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