---
title: "How to pronounce leicester | Murmur"
description: "Leicester is two syllables, LES-ter (L EH1 S T ER0) in CMUdict: the \"ice\" in the middle is not pronounced at all."
canonical: "https://www.murmurtts.com/pronunciation/leicester"
---
[Murmur](https://www.murmurtts.com/)/[Pronunciation](https://www.murmurtts.com/pronunciation)/leicester

Pronunciation · Science and learning

# How to pronounce leicester

Leicester is two syllables, LES-ter (L EH1 S T ER0) in CMUdict: the "ice" in the middle is not pronounced at all.

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## The dictionary sound sequence

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

Dictionary variant 1

`L EH1 S T ER0`

**Syllable estimate**

2 vowel nuclei

**Primary stress**

1st vowel position

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

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 leicester in context

Leicester is an English city and county, and it shows up in football commentary, travel writing and history narration. Spelled out, it looks like "lie-ses-ter" or "lee-ses-ter". The listed form drops the middle letters entirely and sounds like Lester.

1. Leicester won at home on Saturday.
2. We changed trains in Leicester on the way north.

### A practice cue

Read it as the name Lester, the same trick that works for Worcester.

## Read the sound tokens

Each example word below is a cue for the named sound, rather than a respelling of leicester. 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).

`L`sound in **lee**consonant`EH`sound in **Ed**vowel`S`sound in **sea**consonant`T`sound in **tea**consonant`ER`sound in **hurt**vowel

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.

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

[How to pronounce worcester](https://www.murmurtts.com/pronunciation/worcester)[How to pronounce edinburgh](https://www.murmurtts.com/pronunciation/edinburgh)[How to pronounce thames](https://www.murmurtts.com/pronunciation/thames)[How to pronounce colonel](https://www.murmurtts.com/pronunciation/colonel)

[Build a pronunciation test suite for local TTS](https://www.murmurtts.com/blog/pronunciation-test-suite-local-tts) · [Browse all word references](https://www.murmurtts.com/pronunciation)

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