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    Pronunciation · Academic and IELTS words

    How to pronounce “hierarchy”

    HY-uh-rar-kee

    4 syllables · stress on “HY”

    HYuhrarkee
    Britishˈhaɪərɑːki
    Americanˈhaɪərɑːrki

    In short

    “hierarchy” is pronounced HY-uh-rar-kee: 4 syllables, with the stress on “HY”. The stress is on the first syllable even though the word is four syllables long, which feels wrong to speakers of languages that stress later. The ch is a /k/. The version to avoid is hy-uh-RAR-kee — moving the stress to the third syllable.

    Say “hierarchy” in 3 steps

    1. 1Stress the first syllable: HY-uh-rar-kee.
    2. 2The ch is a hard /k/, never “ch” as in “chair”.
    3. 3Hierarchical moves the stress: hy-uh-RAR-kik-ul.

    The version to avoid

    Commonly said as: hy-uh-RAR-kee — moving the stress to the third syllable

    The stress is on the first syllable even though the word is four syllables long, which feels wrong to speakers of languages that stress later. The ch is a /k/.

    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 “hierarchy”, 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 DroEsperanto, licensed under Public domain. Full credits.

    Practise it out loud

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    Say it yourself

    0/6 practised

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    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.

    hh as in hataɪi as in myəa as in about (schwa)rr as in redɑːar as in carkk as in keyiːee as in see

    More academic and ielts words

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

    entrepreneuron-truh-pruh-NURquestionnairekwes-chuh-NAIRenvironmentin-VY-run-muntphenomenonfuh-NOM-ih-nungenreZHON-ruhhypothesishy-POTH-uh-sis

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    Frequently asked questions

    How do you pronounce hierarchy?
    hierarchy is pronounced HY-uh-rar-kee, written /ˈhaɪərɑːki/ in IPA. Stress the first syllable: HY-uh-rar-kee.
    How many syllables are in hierarchy?
    four: HY-uh-rar-kee. The stress falls on “HY”.
    What is the most common mistake with hierarchy?
    hy-uh-RAR-kee — moving the stress to the third syllable. The stress is on the first syllable even though the word is four syllables long, which feels wrong to speakers of languages that stress later. The ch is a /k/.

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