Mystery words: can you guess what they're saying?

I posted a version of this to non-Premium members as well, but you get the enhanced version!

The way that people pronounce words in English sentences can be very different from how they pronounce the same words by themselves.

The 10 audio clips below are short groups of words taken from the middle of a sentence. See if you can guess what the speakers are saying. Then hit the "Show answer" button to see if you were right!

#1

The mystery phrase:

Show answer

"'s up to"

It's up to you.

The next word after "to" is "you". You can hear the vowel sound start to turn into "y" at the end.

The full sentence:

#2

The mystery phrase:

Show answer

"Let me"

Let me get straight to the point.

"Let me" is a common set of words that go together. In natural speech, they combine to sound like "lemme"

The full sentence:

#3

The mystery phrase:

Show answer

"used to"

My grandpa used to tell me about how he had to get up at the crack of dawn every day to start work on the farm.

The "d" at the end of "used to" isn't pronounced.

The full sentence:

#4

The mystery phrase:

Show answer

"is to"

My long-term goal is to open my own restaurant.

You can hear the same sound for the word "to" as in the last example. This is how "to" sounds when it's unstressed.'

The full sentence:

#5

The mystery phrase:

Show answer

"He's going to"

Next up is Steve. He's going to walk us through the new homepage redesign.

Notice that the "s" in "he's" sounds like a "z". That's normal when "s" comes at the end of a word.

"Going to" often sounds like "gonna". It's written that way sometimes when someone wants to write in a way that represents how people speak.

The full sentence: