Idiom Taken to the Cleaners American English Pronunciation
In this American English pronunciation video,
we’re going to go over the idiom ‘taken to
the cleaners’.
To be taken to the cleaners can mean the same
thing as the idiom ‘ripped off’, which we’ve
already studied: They charged me double, I
was taken to the cleaners. But it can also
mean to be bested by someone, to be defeated.
For example, my team was taken to the cleaners
in the last game of the season. That doesn’t
mean that we lost by one or two points. That
means we lost by a lot.
Taken to the cleaners begins with the True
T, your teeth have to come together, your
tongue has to go to the roof of the mouth,
tt. Then we have the AY as in SAY diphthong.
Common problem is not dropping the jaw enough
for the first sound. Ta-. This is a stressed
syllable. The second syllable is unstressed.
Ta-ken, -ken, -ken. Super fast – so it’s
the K, schwa/N sound. For the K sound, the
back part of the tongue comes up and touches
the soft palate here, the tongue tip stays
down. Then you quickly release the K and the
front part of the tongue goes to the roof
of the mouth for the N, -ken. You don’t need
to worry about making a separate schwa vowel
sound, enough of one will happen as you transition.
Now we have TO and THE, both unstressed in
this sentence fragment. I’m going to reduce
the vowel to the schwa in TO, and I’m even
going to reduce the T to a Flap T instead
of a True T. So, it’s going to sound like
‘de’ instead of ‘te’. I’m going to link it
to the word THE. The two words link together
and they’re going to be very flat and quick,
‘to the’, ‘to the’. Actually, I’ve made a
video on these two words specifically, how
the mouth moves to make these two words together,
so check that out. To the, to the, to the.
Not clear on its own, right? Taken to the,
taken to the. Taken to the cleaners. Cleaners,
a noun, a content word, is stressed. It has
two syllables, and just like ‘taken’, stress
is on the first syllable.
Cleaners. ‘Cleaners’ begins with the KL consonant
cluster. So the back part of the tongue lifts
and touches the soft palate here. But this
time, rather than the tongue tip being down,
the tongue tip can be in position for the
L, here. That way when you release the K,
you’re ready to go for the L, kl, kl, kl.
Next, the EE as in SHE vowel – tongue tip
down, cl-, cl-, but front part of the tongue
very close to the roof of the mouth, clea-.
Corners of the lips may pull back a little
bit, clea-. And the last syllable, unstressed,
quite fast, -ners, -ners, -ners. Tongue tip
will be up here at the roof of the mouth for
the N, clean, and then pull back for
the R, cleaner-. Again, you don’t need to
think about making a schwa sound between the
two. The schwa is sort of absorbed by the
R anyway. And the S is pronounced as a Z,
-ners, -ners, -ners. Cleaners, taken to the
cleaners.
Practice your English: Make up a sentence
that uses this idiom, record a video, and
post it as a video response to this video
on YouTube. I can’t wait to watch!
That’s it, and thanks so much for using Rachel’s
English.