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 smelling in American English
SMEH·luhng
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Americans pronounce smelling as SMEH-luhng (/ˈsmɛləŋ/). Stress falls on the first syllable — keep everything else short and quick.
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Sound by sound
Every sound in "smelling".
2 syllables, 6 sounds. Tap a syllable to jump to its row, then explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.
m/m/
Press your lips together. Air flows through your nose. Vocal cords vibrate.
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.
l/l/
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.
uh/ʌ/
Relax your lips, jaw, and tongue completely. Drop your jaw slightly and keep the tongue neutral.
ng/ŋ/
Lift the back of your tongue to the soft palate. Lower your soft palate to let air flow through your nose.
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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
Stressing the wrong syllable.
Stress falls on the first syllable, not the others. Stretch SMEH — keep everything else short and quick.
smeh·LUHNG→SMEH·luhng
02
Pronouncing the unstressed syllable too fully.
Don't pronounce the first syllable too fully. The unstressed syllable reduces to a schwa — the lazy "uh" sound — in casual speech.
SMEH·LUHNG→SMEH·luhng
Questions
Questions people ask about this.
How is "smelling" stressed in American English?
Stress falls on the first syllable — say "SMEH" with a longer, fuller vowel and keep every other syllable short and quick. The respell "SMEH-luhng" marks the stressed syllable in capitals so the rhythm is easy to read at a glance.
Why does the second syllable in "smelling" reduce to "uh"?
Unstressed syllables in American English collapse toward a schwa — a lazy, neutral "uh" sound. The full vowel is what textbooks teach, but in actual American speech every unstressed vowel reduces. The respell "SMEH-luhng" shows the reduced form so you can hear the casual rhythm directly.
Is the American pronunciation of "smelling" 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 "SMEH-luhng" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.
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