---
title: "How to pronounce celtic | Murmur"
description: "Celtic has two CMUdict readings, SEL-tik and KEL-tik; the soft s form is tied to sports team names, the hard k to language and culture."
canonical: "https://www.murmurtts.com/pronunciation/celtic"
---
[Murmur](https://www.murmurtts.com/)/[Pronunciation](https://www.murmurtts.com/pronunciation)/celtic

Pronunciation · Creative work

# How to pronounce celtic

Celtic has two CMUdict readings, SEL-tik and KEL-tik; the soft s form is tied to sports team names, the hard k to language and culture.

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## The dictionary sound sequence

CMUdict lists these 2 North American English pronunciations for **celtic**. Read each sequence from left to right. The numbers mark vowel stress: **1** primary, **2** secondary, **0** unstressed.

Dictionary variant 1

`S EH1 L T IH0 K`

**Syllable estimate**

2 vowel nuclei

**Primary stress**

1st vowel position

Dictionary variant 2

`K EH1 L T IH0 K`

**Syllable estimate**

2 vowel nuclei

**Primary stress**

1st vowel position

[Check celtic in Merriam-Webster and listen to available dictionary audio](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/celtic).

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 celtic in context

Music, history and art writing use Celtic for languages, knots and folk traditions, while sports coverage uses it for team names. CMUdict lists both the s and k forms. Matching the form to the meaning is the main task.

1. The film score borrows heavily from Celtic folk music.
2. They studied Celtic knotwork in the design class.

### A practice cue

Read the sentence around the word first and decide whether it is about culture or a team. Use the k form for culture and language unless the script names a club that uses the s form.

## Read the sound tokens

Each example word below is a cue for the named sound, rather than a respelling of celtic. Unstressed vowels may sound reduced. These cues follow the [CMU phoneme-set key (Appendix A)](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aria/Papers/MastersThesis.pdf#page=115).

`S`sound in **sea**consonant`EH`sound in **Ed**vowel`L`sound in **lee**consonant`T`sound in **tea**consonant`IH`sound in **it**vowel`K`sound in **key**consonant

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## 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.

Copying and downloading happen in your browser. No script upload or audio generation is needed.

## Dictionary source

The phonemes on this page come from [CMU Pronouncing Dictionary](https://github.com/cmusphinx/cmudict/blob/74790861f652b15e4ac49015a90074ad62a27690/cmudict.dict). The dictionary maintainers acknowledge that errors and omissions can remain; check another source or a speaker when the pronunciation matters.

[CMUdict README](https://github.com/cmusphinx/cmudict/blob/74790861f652b15e4ac49015a90074ad62a27690/README) · [Included dictionary license](https://www.murmurtts.com/downloads/cmudict-license.txt)

Source version and checksum

Commit: `74790861f652b15e4ac49015a90074ad62a27690`

Dictionary SHA-256: `81917843c7f44ce2b094ac63873c2c7a4cf802040792c455ba3ca406891c3d22`

## Keep practising

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