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 swallow in American English
SWAH·loh
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Americans pronounce swallow as SWAH-loh (/ˈswɑloʊ/). Stress falls on the first syllable — keep everything else short and quick.
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Sound by sound
Every sound in "swallow".
2 syllables, 5 sounds. Tap a syllable to jump to its row, then explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.
w/w/
Round your lips into a tight circle. Lift the back of your tongue toward the soft palate and add voice.
ah/ɑ/
Relax your lips and drop your jaw significantly. The tongue tip lightly touches behind the bottom front teeth and the back part of the tongue presses down a little to create more dark space in the back of the mouth.
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.
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.
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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 SWAH — keep everything else short and quick.
swah·LOH→SWAH·loh
Questions
Questions people ask about this.
How is "swallow" stressed in American English?
Stress falls on the first syllable — say "SWAH" with a longer, fuller vowel and keep every other syllable short and quick. The respell "SWAH-loh" marks the stressed syllable in capitals so the rhythm is easy to read at a glance.
Is the American pronunciation of "swallow" 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 "SWAH-loh" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.
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