Explore how to use and pronounce the idiom “Pay through the Nose” comfortably in conversational English. Learn which words or syllables to reduce, how to link them, and the melodic shape of the phrase.
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Video Transcript:
Today we’re going to go over the pronunciation for the idiom ‘to pay through the nose’. You might use this phrase when you are talking about something that you’ve paid a large amount of money for. For example, someone might say, I love your car and you might say, Yes, I paid through the nose for it. Or, for example, I paid through the nose for my computer and it broke in the first week. Another example: I’d like to live in Manhattan, but you have to pay through the nose to live there.
Pay begins with the unvoiced pp P consonant sound and is followed by the ‘ay’ as in ‘say’ diphthong [eɪ]. Pay. Through. The TH here is unvoiced th [θ], th, through. The R sound [ɹ] is followed by the ‘oo’ as in ‘boo’ vowel sound [u]. Pay through. Pay through. The. Here, the TH is voiced, and the schwa sound [ə] makes up the rest of the word. Nose begins with the N consonant sound, followed by the ‘oh’ as in ‘no’ diphthong [oʊ], no-, no-, and finally, zz, the voiced Z consonant sound. Nose. Pay through the nose. The two stressed words in this phrase are pay, pay, or paid if you are speaking in the past tense, and nose. You have to pay through the nose.
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