no

Phonetically, you say /noʊ/ (US) or /nəʊ/ (UK/AU). Start with an open-mid back vowel that quickly rises to a closing diphthong, ending with a soft /ʊ/ or glide. Keep the tongue high and the jaw relaxed; the lips start neutral and round slightly toward the off-glide. In careful speech, emphasize the vowel, as in contrastive 'No, not this'.

Two frequent errors: (1) Underpronouncing the diphthong by reducing it to a plain /o/; (2) Pronouncing with a stiff mouth and an exaggerated 'o' reflex, making it sound like 'noh' or 'nah'. To correct: smoothly glide from /o/ to /ʊ/ toward the end of the syllable, keep the jaw relaxed, and allow a gentle lips rounding into the glide. Visualize a tiny y-like glide into the sound.

In US English, you hear a clear /noʊ/ with a prominent closing diphthong and rhotic influence on surrounding vowels. In UK English, /nəʊ/ often features a less rhotic approach and a slightly shorter nucleus with a crisp off-glide. Australian English tends toward a centralized start with a rounded, shorter /əʊ/ sound, sometimes approaching /ɐʊ/ in casual speech. Accent differences are subtle but affect vowel quality and vowel length.

The challenge lies in the diphthongal nucleus, which requires a precise jaw and lip movement transitioning from a rounded vowel to a higher vowel quickly. In rapid speech, the glide can be reduced or altered, changing from /noʊ/ to a more monophthongal /noː/ or /nəʊ/. Mastery involves controlled tongue height change and comfortable lip rounding without adding extra syllables.

Because 'No' is a monosyllable with a short vowel, stress typically falls on the syllable as part of a larger phrase, but when used as a standalone response, it carries perceptual emphasis through duration and pitch. You’ll often hear a slight deceleration and a modal rise or fall in pitch in contrastive usage: 'No, I won’t.' Track this with a small but clear vowel nucleus and a sharp, short consonant onset.