How to pronounce staff in American English

IPA /stæf/ Syllables 1 · staf Stress 1st syllable

STAF

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Americans pronounce staff as STAF (/stæf/). You'll hear it in sentences like "The hospital staff were incredibly kind and professional".

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Clarity

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Stress

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Intonation

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Sound by sound

Every sound in "staff".

1 syllable, 4 sounds. Explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.

s/s/

Place your tongue tip near the roof of your mouth behind your top teeth. Push air through the narrow gap. No voicing.

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.

a/æ/

Drop the jaw noticeably. Keep the body of the tongue low and forward, and don't let the back of the tongue raise toward the soft palate. Pull the lip corners back slightly, almost a starting smile.

f/f/

Lift your bottom lip to touch the very bottom of your top front teeth. Blow air through this contact point without voicing.

In real conversation

Hear "staff" in the wild.

Click any sentence to see the full breakdown — every link, every reduction, every flap-T.

"The hospital staff were incredibly kind and professional."

dhuh HAH·spuh·tuhl STAF wer uhn·KREH·duh·blee KAHYND and pruh·FEH·shuh·nuhl

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Questions

Questions people ask about this.

Is the American pronunciation of "staff" 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 "STAF" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.