Pronunciation · Everyday words people get wrong
How to pronounce “garage”
GA-rahzh
2 syllables · stress on “GA”
In short
Say “garage” in 3 steps
- 1British model: GA-rahzh, stress first, ending in the /ʒ/ of “measure”.
- 2American model: guh-RAHZH, stress second.
- 3The anglicised British GA-rij is also common and perfectly acceptable.
The version to avoid
Commonly said as: guh-RAJ with a hard /dʒ/ ending, or stressing the wrong syllable for your chosen accent
British and American English stress different syllables, and the ending can be the French /ʒ/ or an anglicised /dʒ/. Several combinations are in common use.
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
3 human recordingsActual people saying “garage”, 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 No machine-readable author provided. Chris Melville assumed (based on copyright claims)., Dvortygirl and Jonathan Hearn, licensed under CC BY 2.5 / CC BY-SA 3.0 / CC BY-SA 4.0. 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 practisedListen first, then record. You get feedback on the individual sounds, the stress and the rhythm — no account needed, and nothing is stored.
Recordings are used only to generate this feedback and are not stored. Your accent is never penalised: IELTS scores intelligibility, and so do we.
British vs American
British English stresses the first syllable; American English stresses the second. Both are standard.
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.
More everyday words people get wrong
Same pattern, same fix. Learning them as a group is far faster than one at a time.
Keep exploring
Frequently asked questions
How do you pronounce garage?
How many syllables are in garage?
What is the most common mistake with garage?
Is garage pronounced differently in British and American English?
The full sound library
Next step
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