English pronunciation · Words Starting with P

Potato Pronunciation

Potato is pronounced puh-TAY-toh, IPA /pəˈteɪˌtoʊ/.

puh-TAY-toh

US /pəˈteɪˌtoʊ/  ·  UK /pəˈteɪtəʊ/

Syllables: puh · TAY · toh (3 syllables, stress on syllable 2)

noun: A starchy tuber eaten as a vegetable, and one of the most widely grown crops on earth.

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Potato in a Sentence

  • Put one potato each in the oven.
  • This potato has gone soft in the bag.
  • Potato prices rose after the wet summer.

Common Mispronunciations of Potato

Not POH-tay-toh

The middle syllable is the strong one, and the first shrinks to a quick puh. Fronting the stress is one of the most recognisable learner errors in the word.

Not puh-TAH-toh

The stressed vowel is the ay of late in both standard accents. The tah version is a joke pronunciation, not a real variant.

Tip: The plural keeps an e in the spelling but adds only a z sound: puh-TAY-tohz.

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