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    Pronunciation · Words with silent letters

    How to pronounce “muscle”

    MUS-ul

    2 syllables · stress on “MUS”

    MUSul
    Britishˈmʌsl
    Americanˈmʌsl

    In short

    “muscle” is pronounced MUS-ul: 2 syllables, with the stress on “MUS”. The c is silent here but pronounced in muscular. English routinely revives a silent letter in a longer derived form, which makes learners doubt the base word. The version to avoid is MUS-kul — sounding the c.

    Say “muscle” in 3 steps

    1. 1The c is silent: MUS-ul, identical in sound to “mussel”, the shellfish.
    2. 2End with a syllabic l, no vowel before it.
    3. 3In muscular the c returns: MUS-kyuh-luh.

    The version to avoid

    Commonly said as: MUS-kul — sounding the c

    The c is silent here but pronounced in muscular. English routinely revives a silent letter in a longer derived form, which makes learners doubt the base word.

    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 “muscle”, 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.

    mm as in manʌu as in cupss as in seell as in light

    More words with silent letters

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

    WednesdayWENZ-daysubtleSUT-ulreceiptrih-SEETsalmonSAM-unislandEYE-lunddebtDET

    Keep exploring

    Frequently asked questions

    How do you pronounce muscle?
    muscle is pronounced MUS-ul, written /ˈmʌsl/ in IPA. The c is silent: MUS-ul, identical in sound to “mussel”, the shellfish.
    How many syllables are in muscle?
    two: MUS-ul. The stress falls on “MUS”.
    What is the most common mistake with muscle?
    MUS-kul — sounding the c. The c is silent here but pronounced in muscular. English routinely revives a silent letter in a longer derived form, which makes learners doubt the base word.

    The full sound library

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