Pronunciation · Science and learning

How to pronounce asthma

The th in asthma is silent: CMUdict gives AZ-muh (AE1 Z M AH0), two syllables with a z sound before the m.

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The dictionary sound sequence

CMUdict lists this North American English pronunciation for asthma. Read each sequence from left to right. The numbers mark vowel stress: 1 primary, 2 secondary, 0 unstressed.

Dictionary variant 1

AE1 Z M AH0

Syllable estimate: 2 vowel nuclei
Primary stress: 1st vowel position

Check asthma in Merriam-Webster and listen to available dictionary audio.

Syllable counts come from vowel tokens; CMUdict does not supply syllable boundaries here. Variant order follows the dictionary and does not rank correctness. This lexicon does not represent every accent or context.

Use asthma in context

Asthma comes up in health advice, school forms and medical narration. Readers who sound every letter try "ast-ma" or "asth-ma". CMUdict drops the th and voices the s as z.

Her asthma gets worse during pollen season.
The inhaler helps control asthma attacks.

Read the sound tokens

Each example word below is a cue for the named sound, rather than a respelling of asthma. Unstressed vowels may sound reduced. These cues follow the CMU phoneme-set key (Appendix A).

AEsound in atvowel

Zsound in zeeconsonant

Msound in meconsonant

AHsound in hutvowel

Take it to your next recording

Make an audition worksheet

Select a dictionary variant for your checklist. The two original sentences retain their normal spelling; this worksheet helps you review a recording rather than forcing a speech engine to use phonemes.

Worksheet pronunciation variant

Your plain-text audition worksheet

How to pronounce asthma

Word: asthma
Dictionary variant: 1 of 1
CMUdict ARPABET: AE1 Z M AH0
Vowel nuclei / estimated syllables: 2
Primary stress: 1st vowel position

ORIGINAL AUDITION SCRIPT
Her asthma gets worse during pollen season.
The inhaler helps control asthma attacks.

REVIEW CHECKLIST
[ ] Read both sentences naturally; keep the source wording.
[ ] Compare the intended pronunciation with the selected dictionary variant.
[ ] Listen for vowel sounds, consonants, and word stress in context.
[ ] Check with a speaker or another dictionary when accent or meaning matters.
[ ] Generate and listen to a short Murmur sample before exporting the full script.

Practice note: Go straight from "az" to "muh" with nothing in between.

CMUdict is a North American English lexicon, not a recording or a complete accent guide.
Variant order is dictionary order; it is not a ranking of correctness.
Source: https://github.com/cmusphinx/cmudict/blob/74790861f652b15e4ac49015a90074ad62a27690/cmudict.dict
Source commit: 74790861f652b15e4ac49015a90074ad62a27690
License: https://www.murmurtts.com/downloads/cmudict-license.txt
Reference: https://www.murmurtts.com/pronunciation/asthma

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Dictionary source

The phonemes on this page come from CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The dictionary maintainers acknowledge that errors and omissions can remain; check another source or a speaker when the pronunciation matters.

CMUdict README · Included dictionary license

Source version and checksum

Commit: 74790861f652b15e4ac49015a90074ad62a27690

Dictionary SHA-256: 81917843c7f44ce2b094ac63873c2c7a4cf802040792c455ba3ca406891c3d22

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