Pronunciation · Everyday language

How to pronounce vehicle

Vehicle has two CMUdict forms, VEE-hih-kul with a sounded h and VEE-ih-kul without it; both stress the first syllable.

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The dictionary sound sequence

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

Dictionary variant 1

V IY1 HH IH0 K AH0 L

Syllable estimate: 3 vowel nuclei
Primary stress: 1st vowel position

Dictionary variant 2

V IY1 IH0 K AH0 L

Syllable estimate: 3 vowel nuclei
Primary stress: 1st vowel position

Check vehicle 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 vehicle in context

Vehicle is common in news, insurance documents and road safety narration. The h in the middle is the question: some speakers sound it and others drop it. The dictionary lists both, and neither moves the stress off the first syllable.

Please remove all valuables from the vehicle.
The vehicle was parked two streets away from the scene.

Read the sound tokens

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

Vsound in veeconsonant

IYsound in eatvowel

HHsound in heconsonant

IHsound in itvowel

Ksound in keyconsonant

AHsound in hutvowel

Lsound in leeconsonant

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 vehicle

Word: vehicle
Dictionary variant: 1 of 2
CMUdict ARPABET: V IY1 HH IH0 K AH0 L
Vowel nuclei / estimated syllables: 3
Primary stress: 1st vowel position

ORIGINAL AUDITION SCRIPT
Please remove all valuables from the vehicle.
The vehicle was parked two streets away from the scene.

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: Read the first example twice, once with the h and once without, and keep the form that sounds natural to you. Make sure the stress stays on VEE in both.

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/vehicle

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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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