Pronunciation: breath and breathe

R

rafaelgan

Senior Member
U.S.A
Spanish
Are "breath and breathe" pronounce in the same way?

By the way, in this context "Life is not the amount of breath's you take."

Why is breath with 's?
 
    • Breath is a noun, breathe is a verb. They aren't pronounced the same way. The th in "breath" is like the one in "path". The th in "breathe" is like the one in "the".

    In that sentence, the 's is a typo. It should be breaths.
     
    In many English words "th" stands for a single sound in a word. You could consider it a single letter. There are two possible pronunciations for this 'letter'. One has your voice behind it (voiced) and the other doesn't (unvoiced). The final place 'e' in breathe functions the same way as in these sample word pairs:

    pat --> pate
    sit --> site
    dot --> dote

    In addition, it changes the 'th' sound from the unvoiced to the voiced:

    breath --> breathe
    cloth --> clothe
    bath --> bathe

    Orange Blossom
     
    It's difficult to transliterate the sounds of "breathe" and "breath", but if you have speakers to your computer, you might try looking up "breathe" and "breath" in the Wordreference dictionary and clicking on the icon that looks like a speaker to hear the pronunciation.
     
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