w/w/
Round your lips into a tight circle. Lift the back of your tongue toward the soft palate and add voice.
How to pronounce wave in American English
WAYV
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Americans pronounce wave as WAYV (/weɪv/). You'll hear it in sentences like "I felt a wave of nostalgia when I saw my old photos" or "The surfer caught a huge wave and rode it to the shore" — more examples below.
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Sound by sound
Every sound in "wave".
1 syllable, 3 sounds. Explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.
ay/eɪ/
Start with your jaw slightly open and the front of your tongue forward and slightly up. Glide upward, your jaw closes a little more and your tongue arches higher toward the roof of the mouth.
v/v/
Lift your bottom lip so its inner edge (where the wet part meets the dry part) touches the very bottom of your top front teeth. Add vocal cord vibration as you blow air through.
In real conversation
Hear "wave" in the wild.
Click any sentence to see the full breakdown — every link, every reduction, every flap-T.
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Questions
Questions people ask about this.
Is the American pronunciation of "wave" 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 "WAYV" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.
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