Pronunciation · Famously mispronounced words

How to pronounce “paradigm”

PA-ruh-dyme

3 syllables · stress on “PA”

PAruhdyme

Britishˈpærədaɪm

Americanˈpærədaɪm

In short

“paradigm” is pronounced PA-ruh-dyme: 3 syllables, with the stress on “PA”. The g is silent in paradigm but returns in paradigmatic. English keeps silent letters in the base word and revives them in derived forms, which makes the pattern feel arbitrary. The version to avoid is PA-ruh-dig-um — sounding the g.

Say “paradigm” in 3 steps

1The g is silent: the ending is just “-dyme”, rhyming with “time”.
2Stress the first syllable, PA.
3In paradigmatic the g comes back — pa-ruh-dig-MAT-ic.

The version to avoid

Commonly said as: PA-ruh-dig-um — sounding the g

The g is silent in paradigm but returns in paradigmatic. English keeps silent letters in the base word and revives them in derived forms, which makes the pattern feel arbitrary.

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

2 human recordings

Actual people saying “paradigm”, 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 and Commander Keane, licensed under 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 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.

pp as in pen æa as in cat rr as in red əa as in about (schwa)dd as in day aɪi as in my mm as in man

More famously mispronounced words

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

epitomeih-PIT-uh-mee hyperbolehy-PUR-buh-lee colonelKUR-nul awryuh-RY segueSEG-way cacheKASH

Frequently asked questions

How do you pronounce paradigm?

paradigm is pronounced PA-ruh-dyme, written /ˈpærədaɪm/ in IPA. The g is silent: the ending is just “-dyme”, rhyming with “time”.

How many syllables are in paradigm?

three: PA-ruh-dyme. The stress falls on “PA”.

What is the most common mistake with paradigm?

PA-ruh-dig-um — sounding the g. The g is silent in paradigm but returns in paradigmatic. English keeps silent letters in the base word and revives them in derived forms, which makes the pattern feel arbitrary.

The full sound library

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