Pronunciation · Words with fewer syllables than they look

How to pronounce “business”

BIZ-nus

2 syllables · stress on “BIZ”

BIZnus

Britishˈbɪznəs

Americanˈbɪznəs

In short

“business” is pronounced BIZ-nus: 2 syllables, with the stress on “BIZ”. The word does come from busy, but the i in the middle vanished. Learners who reconstruct it from its parts add a syllable that fluent speakers never say. The version to avoid is BIZ-ee-nes — three syllables, built from “busy” plus “ness”.

Say “business” in 3 steps

1Two syllables: BIZ-nus.
2There is no “ee” in the middle. Go straight from /z/ to /n/.
3The ending is a weak schwa plus /s/, never “ness” with a full vowel.

The version to avoid

Commonly said as: BIZ-ee-nes — three syllables, built from “busy” plus “ness”

The word does come from busy, but the i in the middle vanished. Learners who reconstruct it from its parts add a syllable that fluent speakers never say.

Hear real people say it

Model audio is consistent; real speech is not. Hearing several actual speakers is what makes a word recognisable when someone says it at full speed.

Real speakers

1 human recording

Actual people saying “business”, not a synthetic voice. Real speech varies — that variation is what you need to recognise, and what a single model voice cannot show you.

Recordings from Wikimedia Commons by Dvortygirl, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Full credits.

Practise it out loud

Reading about a sound does not change your mouth. Say it, hear it back, and fix one thing at a time.

Say it yourself

0/6 practised

Listen first, then record. You get feedback on the individual sounds, the stress and the rhythm — no account needed, and nothing is stored.

Three speakers per accent

Recordings are used only to generate this feedback and are not stored. Your accent is never penalised: IELTS scores intelligibility, and so do we.

The sounds inside this word

Each links to a full guide with mouth position, audio and drills. If a word keeps failing, the problem is usually one of these.

bb as in bed ɪi as in sit zz as in zoo nn as in no əa as in about (schwa)ss as in see

Who finds this word hardest

Your first language predicts which part of a word will break. These guides list the highest-impact fixes for each.

Hindi speakers: Hindi speakers' single highest-impact fix is the v/w merger: Hindi has one sound (व) where English has two, so 'wine' and 'vine' collapse.
Bengali speakers: For Bengali speakers the big three are: /f/ and /v/ hardening into aspirated p and b, /z/ turning into /dʒ/ ('zoo' → 'joo'), and s/sh swapping, plus an extra vowel breaking up consonant clusters (school → ischool).
Arabic speakers: The signature fix for Arabic speakers is /p/: Arabic has no p, so 'pen' becomes 'ben' and 'park' becomes 'bark'.
Vietnamese speakers: For Vietnamese speakers one issue towers over all others: final consonants.
Thai speakers: Thai allows very few final sounds, so English word-endings are the top priority: 'rice' → 'rai', 'bill' → 'bin'.

More words with fewer syllables than they look

Same pattern, same fix. Learning them as a group is far faster than one at a time.

comfortableKUMF-tuh-bul vegetableVEJ-tuh-bul chocolateCHOK-lut interestingIN-truh-sting temperatureTEM-pruh-chuh restaurantRES-tront

Frequently asked questions

How do you pronounce business?

business is pronounced BIZ-nus, written /ˈbɪznəs/ in IPA. Two syllables: BIZ-nus.

How many syllables are in business?

two: BIZ-nus. The stress falls on “BIZ”.

What is the most common mistake with business?

BIZ-ee-nes — three syllables, built from “busy” plus “ness”. The word does come from busy, but the i in the middle vanished. Learners who reconstruct it from its parts add a syllable that fluent speakers never say.

The full sound library

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