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How to pronounce mortgage

Mortgage is pronounced MOR-gij in American English and MAW-gij in British English. It has two syllables with the stress on the first, and the t is silent. The ending sounds like gij, not gage.

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  • 2 syllables
  • Stress on MOR
  • US and UK IPA
  • Checked in Cambridge and Oxford

mortgage

Two syllables, stress on the first

noun · a loan from a bank to buy a house, which you pay back over many years

  1. MORmɔːr (stressed)
  2. gijɡɪdʒ
  • US /ˈmɔːr.ɡɪdʒ/MOR-gij Recorded voice
  • UK /ˈmɔː.ɡɪdʒ/MAW-gij Your device’s voice

IPA checked in the Cambridge Dictionary and Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries. The recording is American English.

Mortgage, sound by sound

Each sound in the IPA, with a word you already know that has it.

US American English/ˈmɔːr.ɡɪdʒ/

  1. MORstressed

    • /m/as in man
    • /ɔː/as in saw
    • /r/as in red

  2. gij

    • /ɡ/as in get
    • /ɪ/as in sit
    • /dʒ/as in jam

UK British English/ˈmɔː.ɡɪdʒ/

  1. MAWstressed

    • /m/as in man
    • /ɔː/as in saw

  2. gij

    • /ɡ/as in get
    • /ɪ/as in sit
    • /dʒ/as in jam

Say mortgage yourself

Press the microphone and say it once. Your browser writes down what it hears: if it writes mortgage, you were understood. If it writes another word, you see which sound changed.

Tip. The t is silent. Say MOR-gij (US) or MAW-gij (UK), not MORT-gij.

Record yourself and play it next to our recording: the quickest way to hear a difference.

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mortgage

    Common mortgage pronunciation mistakes

    What people often say instead, and how to fix it. Say MOR-gij.

    • NotMORT-gij

      Saying the t because it is written. Go from r straight to g.

    • NotMOR-gayj

      Reading age as in cage. The ending is a weak ij, as in village.

    • Notmor-GAYJ

      Stressing the end. The stress is on the first syllable.

    Mortgage in a sentence

    Hear each one, slow it down, then say it. Words change a little when they join others, so practise them in sentences too.

    • We pay our mortgage on the first of the month.

    • They took out a mortgage to buy the flat.

    • The bank offered us a lower mortgage rate.

    Is the t in mortgage silent?

    Yes. The t is silent: MOR-gij. Mortgage is in a small group of words where the middle consonant is written but not said.

    The word came into English from Old French mort gage, which meant dead pledge. The two parts, mort and gage, joined in the Middle Ages. In speech the t was lost, and the word is now said as one flowing unit.

    The ending is also not what it looks like. The age is a weak ij, as in village, not the ayj of cage. In American English say the r after the first vowel; in British English the first vowel is the long aw of law.

    Words that sound like mortgage

    Rhymes and words that share its tricky sound. Open any of them in the checker and say it.

    More words with silent letters

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