How to pronounce

How to pronounce Beautiful

/ˈbju.tə.fəl/
BYOO-tuh-fuhl

Beautiful has 3 syllables. The stress is on the first syllable, "byoo". Capital letters in the respelling show where the stress falls.

Say beautiful and check it

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Accent

Press record, say "beautiful" once or twice at normal speed, then stop. You will see which syllables matched and what to change.

Beautiful syllables

Beautiful has 3 syllables: BYOO-tuh-fuhl.

  1. BYOObju
  2. tuh
  3. fuhlfəl

BYOO-tuh-ful, three syllables, stress on the first. The "eau" is a single "yoo" sound, and the middle syllable is a weak "tuh", not "tee".

Sounds to watch

The l sound

Touch the tongue tip to the ridge behind your top teeth. At the end of a syllable the l is darker and the back of the tongue rises.

Weak syllables

The unstressed syllables use a short, relaxed uh (schwa). Rushing through them lightly is correct; giving them a full vowel sounds unnatural.

Beautiful in a sentence

  • The view from the ridge is beautiful at any time of year.
  • It was a beautiful morning for a swim.

Read either sentence into the recorder above. The check judges only the target word, so the rest of the sentence can be rough.

What Speakeroo listens for

These are the pronunciation patterns from Speakeroo’s speech feature catalog that this target tends to expose. The check above reports the ones it hears.

  • Stress placed on the wrong syllableMake the correct syllable longer, clearer and more prominent.
  • Final /l/ unclearKeep tongue-tip contact while raising the back of the tongue for a clear final /l/.
  • Final consonant omittedHold the final mouth position briefly without adding another vowel.
  • Schwa not reducedRelax unstressed vowels toward a short neutral sound.
  • Every syllable stressed equallyEmphasise one main syllable and reduce the others.

Questions

How do you pronounce beautiful?

Beautiful is pronounced /ˈbju.tə.fəl/, or BYOO-tuh-fuhl in plain letters. It has 3 syllables and the stress falls on the first syllable, "byoo".

How many syllables are in beautiful?

3: BYOO-tuh-fuhl. The capital letters mark the stressed syllable.

How do you use beautiful in a sentence?

The view from the ridge is beautiful at any time of year. It was a beautiful morning for a swim.

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