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 spare in American English
SPAIR
Start here
Americans pronounce spare as SPAIR (/spɛr/). You'll hear it in sentences like "Take care to share the spare chair" or "He builds detailed model airplanes in his spare time" — more examples below.
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Sound by sound
Every sound in "spare".
1 syllable, 3 sounds. Explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.
p/p/
Press your lips together to stop the air, then release. No vocal cord vibration.
air/ɛr/
Start with the 'eh' vowel mouth position. Pull the tongue back and up while flaring the lips for the 'r'.
In real conversation
Hear "spare" in the wild.
Click any sentence to see the full breakdown — every link, every reduction, every flap-T.
"He builds detailed model airplanes in his spare time."
hee BIHLDZ DEE·tayld MAH·duhl AIR·playnz ihn hihz SPAIR TAHYM
"She transformed the spare room into a functional home office."
shee trans·FORMD dhuh SPAIR ROOM IHN·too uh FUHNGK·shuh·nuhl HOHM AH·fuhs
"Take care to share the spare chair."
TAYK KAIR tuh SHAIR dhuh SPAIR CHAIR
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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
Pronouncing the "R" too clearly.
Americans use a relaxed retroflex R — the tongue curls back rather than rolling. The R is one continuous sound with the vowel before it, not two separate sounds.
… (no R)→… r (curl the tongue)
Questions
Questions people ask about this.
How do I pronounce the R in "spare"?
Americans use a relaxed retroflex R: the tongue curls back rather than rolling, and the R is one continuous sound with the vowel before it — not two separate sounds. Don't try to pronounce a separate vowel followed by a separate R. Treat them as a single shape.
Is the American pronunciation of "spare" 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 "SPAIR" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.
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