s/s/
Place your tongue tip near the roof of your mouth behind your top teeth. Push air through the narrow gap. No voicing.
How to pronounce seals in American English
SEELZ
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Americans pronounce seals as SEELZ (/silz/). The L in "seals" is a dark L — the back of the tongue rises toward the soft palate, adding a small "uh" quality before the L. This is called the Dark L vs Light L, the kind of sound shift that makes everyday speech feel effortless. It comes out as SEELZ. You'll hear it in sentences like "The polar bear relies on sea ice to hunt for seals".
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Sound by sound
Every sound in "seals".
1 syllable, 4 sounds. Explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.
ee/i/
Pull the corners of your lips back slightly. Arch the middle-front of your tongue high toward the roof of the mouth.
l/l/
DarkKeep the tongue tip down and pull the back of the tongue up toward the throat. The 'dark' sound comes from the back.
z/z/
Same position as S, but add vocal cord vibration. Feel the buzz.
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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
Treating every L the same.
The L in "seals" is a dark L — the back of the tongue rises toward the soft palate, adding a small "uh" quality before the L. Dark L adds a small schwa-like "uh" before the L. The back of the tongue lifts toward the soft palate.
seals→SEELZ
Questions
Questions people ask about this.
Is the American pronunciation of "seals" 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 "SEELZ" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.
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