The /s/ sound in English
/s/ is the voiceless alveolar fricative — a consonant of English. Here is how to make it with your mouth, what usually goes wrong, which words carry it, and the sounds it gets confused with.
How to make the /s/ sound
Hold the tongue tip near (not touching) the ridge behind the upper teeth and force a narrow stream of air down the groove of the tongue.
Practise it on its own before you put it in a word: hold the position, make the sound, then release. Once it is stable in isolation, drop it into the example words below and keep the same mouth shape — most of the difficulty of an English sound disappears the moment your tongue and lips are physically in the right place.
The mistake learners make with /s/
Adding a vowel before /s/ in clusters ("estudy" for "study"), or letting /s/ drift toward /ʃ/ before /r/ and /j/.
If that description sounds like you, work through the contrast pairs further down: hearing the difference reliably always comes before producing it reliably.
Words with the /s/ sound
Start with the classic three — sun, lesson, bus — then work through real words that contain /s/. Every word below has a full pronunciation page with audio and a sound-by-sound breakdown.
/s/ versus the sounds it gets confused with
These are the sounds that sit closest to /s/ in the mouth, and the ones that swallow it when a learner is not careful. Learn each pair as a pair:
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zExactly the /s/ tongue position with voicing added, so the airflow buzzes. Say “sun” (/s/) and “zoo” (/z/) back to back until the two stop blurring together.
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ʃPull the tongue slightly back from the /s/ position, spread the blade wide behind the ridge, round the lips a little, and push air through with no voice. Say “sun” (/s/) and “she” (/ʃ/) back to back until the two stop blurring together.
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θLet the tongue tip touch (or just peek between) the upper front teeth and blow air over it with no voicing. Say “sun” (/s/) and “think” (/θ/) back to back until the two stop blurring together.
Questions about /s/
- How do you pronounce the /s/ sound?
- Hold the tongue tip near (not touching) the ridge behind the upper teeth and force a narrow stream of air down the groove of the tongue.
- What words have the /s/ sound?
- sun, lesson, bus, this, search, site, use, business, also — all contain /s/.
- What is /s/ called?
- /s/ is the voiceless alveolar fricative. It is a consonant in the English sound system.
Stop looking words up one at a time
One sound at a time is slow. PHONO puts the IPA above every word of whatever you are reading — in your browser, in a PDF, in any app — the moment you select it. An offline pronunciation dictionary, US and UK audio, one hotkey.