Learn Australian English in this episode of Aussie English where I teach you guys 21 ways to greet someone like a native English speaker!
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21 Ways To Greet Someone Like A Native
Blue text = Pronunciation tips using English spelling
G’day guys. Welcome to this episode of Aussie English. I’m Pete, and today I’m going to be teaching you 21 ways to greet someone like a native. Let’s go!
So, let’s start with the simple ones guys.
1. Hello
HA LOW
Hello. Hello. Hello, mate! Hello. So, Hello is the kind of greeting that I would use as a native when answering the phone, you know, *ring* *ring*, “Hello? It’s Pete speaking.”, if I was answering the door and I didn’t know who it was, someone’s knocked on the door, “Hello? Who’s there?”. But it’s not really the kind of greeting that I would use when talking to someone face-to-face.
2. Hi
HI
Hi. Hi, mate! Hi. Hi, again, is pretty common. You’re going to hear this all the time, especially, in countries like America, probably Britain as well. You might hear it from time to time in Australia, but again, it’s not the kind of greeting that I would really use with people I know. It might be something that I say to a stranger. If someone bumps into me and I turn around and they were like, “Oh, sorry. How’s it going?”, I might say, “Oh, hi!”.
3. Hey
HAY
Hey. Hey, mate! Hey, how’s it going? Hey. Hey’s the kind of greeting that I would use all the time. This is short, sweet, very quick. Hey. Hey, how’s it going? Hey.
4. G’day
GEH DAY
G’day. G’day, mate! G’day. G’day. G’day is another greeting that you guys hear me saying all the time. This one, however, is definitely Australian. You’re not going to hear this by Americans. You’re not going to hear this by people from the UK, at least, not with that contracted “Good”. They’ll probably say “Good day” if they’re really in a formal situation. But in Australia we say “G’day” all the time, and especially the more working-class you are, as you go out into the countryside, you’re going to hear people like Steve Irwin or Crocodile Dundee, that kind of stereotypical Australian saying, “G’day mate.” G’day. G’day.
5. Howdy
HOW DEE
Howdy. Howdy, guys! Howdy. Howdy’s another one that you might hear sometimes from Australians, but I think this one is a lot more American, and the only reason that Australians might say it is if they watch a lot of American TV and they hear this all the time, or they’re kind of just being a little jovial, you know, a little humorous, like “Howdy! How’s it going? Howdy, guys!”, you know, sort of putting on that American accent a little bit, but not in a nasty way. So, that’s “Howdy”. Howdy, guys! Howdy.
Alright, before we move onto the really really good ones, the longer ones, the slightly more difficult ones, I want to get through the fact that we don’t say “How do you do?”. This’s something that I feel is taught all the time, and I have people saying this to me, but it is incredibly formal. Obviously, if you were incredibly proper, incredibly formal, if you’re in the royal family, if you’re the Queen of England you might say to people, “How do you do? How do you do sir?”, but no one is going to say that to you in real life. No natives would ever greet each other “How do you do?” unless they were being sarcastic. It’s a lot more natural to hear people saying…
6. How’re you doing? = How ya doin’?
HOW AH YU DO EN / HOW YA DO EN
How’re you doing? How are you doing? How ya doin’? How ya doin’? Good mate. How are you doin’? How’re you doing? And this one’s pronounced “HOW YA DO EN”. How ya doin’? How ya doin’?
So, now that we’ve covered that let’s move onto the next ones, and these are really common, these are really common.
7. What’s up = S’up
WOT SUP / SUP
What’s up? Hey, mate, what’s up? What is up? Not literally what is up, but more, “What is up with you? What’s going on? What’re you up to? What’s up?”, and you’ll often hear this contracted to just “S’up?”. So, I might be like, “Hey, mate, what’s up?” or I could be, “Hey mate, s’up?”. So, you’re going to hear this all the time. What’s up? What’s up? Or simply, s’up? S’up mate?
8. What’ve you been up to (lately)? = Whatcha been upta?
WAH TEV YU BEEN UP TA LATE LEE / WAH CHA BIN UP TA
What’ve you been up to lately? What have you been up to lately? So, what’ve you been up to? What’ve you been doing? What’ve you been up to lately? And you’re going to hear this contracted all the time to, “Whatcha been upta?” WHA CHA BIN UP TA. Whatcha bin upta? Whatcha bin upta, mate? G’day mate, whatcha bin upta? Whatcha bin upta? And this is just another way of saying, “What’ve you been doing?”. WHA CHA BIN UPTA?
9. What’s going on? = S’goin’ on?
WOT SGO EN ON / SGO EN ON
Another really common one is “What’s goin’ on?”. What’s goin’ on? Not much, what’s goin’ on with you? What’s goin’ on, man? What’s going on, mate? And you’ll often hear, What’s goin’ on? What’s goin’ on? What’s goin’ on?, you’ll often hear this contracted to just “S’goin’ on?”, SGO EN ON? So, we’ve just taken “What” out of the equation, left the “S” and then we’ve got “GO EN ON”. S’goin’ on? S’goin’ on, mate?
10. What’s the goss?
WOTS THA GOSS
What’s the goss? What’s the goss, mate? Not much. What’s the goss with you? What about you? What’s the goss? What’s the goss? “Goss” in this case, is short for the word “Gossip” as in rumours, what’s the news?, what’re the secrets about people? What’s the goss? What’s the gossip about you? What’s the goss?
11. What’s new?
WOTS NYU
What’s new? G’day, mate, what’s new? What’s new? What’s new, man? What’s new is just literally, “What is new with you?”, What is the news? What’s new? Can you tell me something I don’t know or that I didn’t know when I last saw you? What’s new?
12. What’s the news? = What’s news?
WOTS THA NYUS / WOTS NYUS
What’s the news? What’s the news? And this often gets contracted to “What’s news?”. What’s news, mate? Not much. What about you? What’s news? So, you’ve got “What’s new” with no “S” at the end, and then you’ve got, “What’s news?”. And when someone says to you, “What’s news? What’s news?”, they’re asking you to tell them what yours news is. Like you’re watching the news on TV and you’re hearing all of the new information for the day. They want to know what your new information is. What’s news? Tell me what’s new with you. Tell me what’s news. What’s your news? What’s news?
13. What’s been happening?
WOTS BIN HAP EN EN
What’s been happening? Hey, man. How’s it goin’? What’s been happenin’? What has been happening? And this often gets contracted all the way down from “What has been happening?” to “What’s been happenin’?” What’s been happenin’? And this is a lot similar to “What’s the news?”, “What’s the goss?”, “What’s your news?”. I’m asking you about what’s been happening in your life. What’s been happenin’?
14. How’s it going? = How’s it goin’?
HOW ZIT GO EN
Another really really common one, and this is one that you should probably focus on out of all of them in here, all of these different greetings, this is a really really common one that’s easy to remember and that you’re going to be able to use a lot and hear a lot in Australia, “How’s it goin’?”. How’s it going? How’s it goin’, mate? How’re you? How’s it goin’, mate? “How is it going” getting contracted down to “How’s it goin’?” HOW ZIT GO EN. How’s it goin’?
15. How’re you going? = How ya goin’?
HOW AH YU GO EN / HOW YA GO EN
Another one, similar to “How’s it goin'” is “How’re you goin’?”. How’re you going? How’re you going, mate? Yeah, not bad. How’re you goin’, mate? How are you goin’, and this gets contracted down to just HOW YA GO EN. How ya goin’?
16. How are you? = How are ya?
HOW AH YU / HOW AH YA
How are you? How are you? How ya goin’? How are ya? Hey, mate! How are ya? How are ya, mate? How are you? Are you good? How are you? Tell me how you are. Are you good? But this one gets contracted down to HOW WAH YA. How are ya? So, that again, that is an incredibly common one. How are ya? How are ya? Learn that one as well as, “How’s it goin’?” and “How are ya?”. How are ya, mate? How’s it goin’, mate? How are ya?
17. How’s things?
HOWZ THINGZ
How’s things? How’s things on your end? How’s things, dude? How’s things? How is things? This one’s probably incorrect grammatically because “Things” is plural and you’re saying “How IS things”, but all the same, it’s said a lot. How’s things? How’s things? This’s similar to “What’s news?”, “What’s goss?”, “What’s been happenin’?”. How are your things? What’re the things like on your end? Tell me about your things. How’s things?
18. How’re things?
HOW AH THINGZ
And then, obviously, we’ve got the grammatically correct version, “How ARE things?”. How’re things? Dude! How’re things? I haven’t seen you in ages. Yeah, good to see you too, man. How’re things? How’re things? We should catch up! How’re things? How’re things?
19. How’s it hanging?
HOW ZIT HANG EN
How’s it hanging? How is it hanging? Dude, how’s it hangin’? Yeah, not too bad, mate. What about you? How’s it hangin’? How’re you mate? How’s it hangin’? “Hanging” like you were hanging from a tree. How’s it hanging? This’s also very common. And again, with that “How’s it…” it turns into HOW ZIT, HOW ZIT. How’s it hangin’? So, it gets contracted down from “How is it hanging?” to “How’s it hangin’?”.
20. How’ve you been?
HOW EV YU BEEN
And getting to the last one here, guys, “How have you been?”. Mate, how’ve you been? How have you been? Have you been well, mate? How’ve you been, mate? This is one that also gets contracted even further. We get rid of the EV from “Have” that’s on “How” and we just say…
21. How ya been?
HOW YA BIN
“How ya been?”. How ya been? Dude, I haven’t seen you in ages! How ya been? Dude, what about you? How ya been? How ya been?
That’s it, guys. There’s at least 21 in there. They should be pretty easy. There’s a few interesting pronunciation things going on there, but definitely go back over it. Have a look at the way that I’ve outlined the real pronunciation of these phrases, and focus more on using those kinds of colloquial greetings and colloquial ways of saying, “How are you?”, “How’re you going”, “How’re you doing?”, “What’s going on?”, all of that sort of stuff. You’ll sound a lot more native and people are going to respond really definitely I think you’ll find than if you were to use things like, “Hello” and “How do you do?”.
Anyway, let me know what you guys think. Do you already use some of these in your day-to-day spoken English? Comment below, and I’ll catch you later guys. Hope you’re well.
G’day. Goodbye. See ya!
Pronunciation notes:
- As I speak more casually or with a stronger accent the pronunciation of certain vowels often shifts.
YOU [jʉː] > YA [jɐ]
BEEN [biːn] > BIN [bɪn]
-ING [ɪŋ] > EN [en]
TO [tʉː] > TA [tɐ]
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Walking With Pete: Melbourne Weather
In this episode of Walking With Pete I chat to you guys about Melbourne weather.
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Walking With Pete: Melbourne Weather
G’day guys. Welcome to this episode of Walking With Pete. Although I’m sort of seated at the moment, I’m not walking around.
Um… I wanted to do this one out and about today and I thought it would be a good chance for me to make a video so that I can keep building the YouTube channel and keep putting videos up there for you guys to watch and hopefully help you improve your Australian English. Anyway. The weather’s been really bizarre the last few days. It keeps changing. It goes from wet to sunny, back to wet, to windy, back to sunny, and I guess I wanted to kind of cover the fact that Melbourne has this reputation for very very interesting weather. Weather that changes all the time. And it’s definitely true, especially in Summer and in the seasons like Autumn and Spring around Summer, at least, on a personal level that’s when I feel like it’s at its most… um… it’s highest level of changing all the time, changeability if you want. And so, yeah, I think part of the reason, or the main reason, is that we have cold fronts, which are these… if you imagine I’m… my face is Australia, Perth’s over here, Melbourne’s over here. Hopefully I’ve got that the right way around when I put this video on my computer. If the… if Perth’s over here we have these cold fronts that are continually coming across the bottom of Australia like this as it goes around Antarctica and Australia’s up here, the bottom of Australia. These cold fronts go around and around and around Antarctica and they come across Australia, and they bring with them rain and then afterwards, behind the cold front, tends to be nice weather. And so you have these constant cold fronts coming every few days and so the weather goes from cloudy, rainy, a lot of wind to all of a sudden sunny, no wind, incredibly beautiful, and then all of a sudden it’ll be back to raining and windy again. And so, we have this change all the time. Whereas the further north you go. So, say Victoria’s here, Perth’s over here in Western Australia and then Queensland’s up here. The further north you go the more stable the weather seems to be. So, if it’s sunny it tends to be sunny for a week or so, maybe longer, if it’s wet and rainy again it’ll tend to be rainy for a week or so, maybe longer, but down the bottom here in Australia, especially in Victoria where I live, it changes sometimes on a daily basis, sometimes even multiple times within a day, and certainly on a weekly basis it’ll change from wet and rainy to dry and sunny, back to wet and rainy again. And that’s what we’re experiencing at the moment. Two days ago the weather was beautiful. It was about 26 degrees and as you can see right now, you can probably see on my leg there, it’s literally just started to rain after being a relatively nice today, although, there was quite a bit of wind. So, yeah, I guess I wanted to talk about the fact that Melbourne has a very very variable climate on a yearly basis as well as a weekly, maybe a monthly basis, and sometimes even a daily basis.
And I guess I should point you guys to a song by Crowded House, which is called Four Seasons In One Day, and Crowded House is an Australian band that you guys should definitely check out, and Four Seasons In One Day was a song written about the weather in Melbourne or so I believe.
Anyway. That’s probably enough for this episode, guys. I hope you’ve liked it. Um… I hope you come and visit Melbourne one day and I hope that the weather a little bit nicer than this at the moment. And yeah, who knows. See you soon guys!
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AE 403 – Expression: To Have Buckley’s Chance
Learn Australian English in this episode of the Aussie English Podcast where I teach you how to use TO HAVE BUCKLEY’S CHANCE like a native speaker.
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AE 403 – Expression: To Have Buckley’s Chance
Welcome to convict Sydney, New South Wales, in the 1790s. A tiny settlement clinging to the edge of the great aboriginal continent we call Australia. Now most of us think of this as a pretty cruel and hopeless place, a dumping ground for the prisoners of Britain’s overcrowded jails, where people were miserable most of the time, but that’s not the whole story. New South Wales became a radical experiment in giving rogues, thieves, and adventurers a chance.
****
How’s it going, guys? Just for something different instead of, ‘G’day, guys!’. How’s it going? How’s it going?
Welcome to The Aussie English Podcast, guys, the number one podcast for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English, whether you want to understand Australian English or speak English like an Aussie, The Aussie English Podcast is the right place for you.
And it’s brought to you by The Aussie English Classroom, an online learning environment where you get access to learning materials in courses with lessons and quizzes, all the bonus content that is specifically designed to help you learn Australian English even faster. And today’s expression episode is turned into a course that is then put up on The Aussie English Classroom with a whole bunch of lessons and exercises for you to complete in your own time.
Anyway. So, today’s intro scene was from a documentary called Rogue Nation, which was filmed in 2009, where historian Michael Cathcart tells the epic story of how the colourful characters of early colonial Australia transformed the original penal settlement into a land with rights and opportunity in a mere 40 years, in just four decades. So, it’s an absolutely brilliant doco. I really recommend that you suss it out if you can. It’s called Rogue Nation, R-O-G-U-E N-A-T-I-O-N, Rogue Nation.
So, today we’re going to be talking about convicts, convicts and Australian history, and that’ll be in the Australian fact at the end of today’s episode, but that’s why we had that intro scene there. And the Aussie joke today is a little bit of a longer joke but it’s related to Australian convict history.
Aussie Joke:
So, here’s the Aussie joke: A pom, which is an English person, a pom fresh off the plane at Sydney airport is trying to negotiate Australian Customs. Finally, when it’s his turn to get his passport stamped, the customs officer starts rattling off the usual questions. How long do you intend to stay, mate? And the pom says, one week. What’s the nature of this trip? And the pom says, business. Do you have any past criminal convictions? And the Pom says, I didn’t think we still needed to. I didn’t think we still needed to.
The joke there being that Australia was founded on convicts. So, we had a lot of criminals, a lot of convicts, that were brought over to Australia in the early years of Australian settlement. And the joke that he’s making there when the customs officer asks, do you have any past criminal convictions? So, have you been convicted of a crime previously? Which they ask. They want to know if you’re a criminal. The pom, the English man, says, I didn’t think we still needed that. The joke is there that he didn’t think it was still a requirement that he was a criminal in order to enter Australia. Anyway, that’s the joke.
Expression:
Alright so, today’s expression is ‘to have Buckley’s chance’, ‘to have Buckley’s chance’. And as you’ll find out, when we go through the origin of this expression, this is also tied in with convict history in Australia.
Anyway, let’s go through and define the words in the expression ‘to have Buckley’s chance’.
Definitions:
So, ‘to have’, the verb ‘to have’. You’re going to know what the verb ‘to have’ is. It means to possess something, to own something, to hold something. That is ‘to have’. You have something.
‘Buckley’s’. ‘Buckley’s’ is obviously the word ‘Buckley’, which is the surname of an Australian convict, William Buckley, and then it’s got that possessive article at the end of it, the ‘s’, the ”s’. ‘Buckley’s’, as in something that belongs to Buckley. So, that’s what ‘Buckley’s’ means.
‘A chance’, if you have a chance at something, it is the possibility of something occurring or the possibility of something happening. So, that is ‘a chance’. If you’ve got no chance, something is impossible. If you have a chance, there is a possibility that that thing can happen.
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Expression Definition & Origin:
So, let’s go through and define the expression and talk about its origin.
So, ‘to have Buckley’s chance’, if you’ve got Buckley’s chance, it means that you have little to no chance of something happening. You have no prospect whatsoever of being successful at something. So, there’s effectively no possibility that something will happen. You’ve got Buckley’s chance, mate. You’ve got Buckley’s.
And I should mention, it often gets abbreviated to just ‘you have Buckley’s’. So, instead of saying ‘chance’ at the end there, we just dropped the word ‘chance’, and we say ‘to have Buckley’s’, you’ve got us, you’ve got Buckley’s chance.
So, the origins of this expression. There were two possible origins. The first origin is that it comes from the convict William Buckley who escaped from Port Phillip, which is where I live. I live in Port Phillip Bay, or at least near Port Phillip Bay, in Victoria, and William Buckley escaped in 1803. He escaped in 1803. And he lived with the indigenous people who lived in this area, the Wathaurong, for 32 years. 32 years, that’s longer than I’ve been alive, that William Buckley lived with the indigenous people in this area before he then came into contact with a group of Englishmen who had come in 1835 to found the city of Melbourne, and that’s when they encountered this guy, and obviously they thought he was dead. So, they thought that he had no chance of surviving, and so the expression ‘to have Buckley’s chance’, I guess, is related to that idea that he had no chance of survival, but he managed to survive for 32 years.
The second origin is that it possibly comes from a Melbourne firm called ‘Buckley and Nunn’. So, these are two surnames, and the second surname there is spelt N-U-N-N. ‘Buckley and Nunn’. And this was established later in the 1800s in 1851, and it suggests that a pun developed on the word ‘Nunn’, N-U-N-N, part of the firm’s name, and it was a pun with the word ‘none’, N-O-N-E, meaning ‘not any’. And so, there was also an expression used back then where it was ‘Buckley’s and none’, ‘Buckley’s and none’. So, you had Buckley’s chance, which was effectively zero, and then none, as in not any chance.
So, those are the two potential origins, but I imagine that the word ‘Buckley’ in the firm’s name, Buckley and Nunn, is related to William Buckley or one of his descendants.
Anyway, guys, let’s go through some examples of how I would use the expression ‘to have Buckley’s chance.
Examples:
1.
So, example number one. My father used to say, ‘you’ve got Buckley’s’ or ‘you’ve got Buckley’s chance’ all the time. He used to say that to me any time I had no chance of doing something, of getting something, of receiving something, anytime I had no chance. So, I remember one day being out playing football with my father on an oval as a kid, and I remember trying to kick, a goal a football goal, from about 60 metres away from the goal, and there was no chance that I could do this. So, my dad would have yelled out, you’ve got Buckley’s chance mate. There’s no chance you’re going to kick that goal from 60 metres away from the goal post. You’ve got Buckley’s. You’ve got Buckley’s chance.
2.
Example number two. So, imagine that you want to ask for a raise at work or maybe you want to ask for a better desk, a better office, but you don’t really deserve it. So, when it comes to work, you’re a bit of a bludger. You like bludging. You’re a bit of a slacker. You enjoy slacking off at work. And so, when you go and ask for this pay rise or this new office, this new desk, you ask your boss and he says, nah, you’ve got Buckley’s chance mate. There’s no chance that you’re going to get that. You’ve got Buckley’s.
3.
Example number three. This time, imagine you are an Aussie bloke you’re out at a club, you’re out at a pub, you’re sinking some beers with some mates, you guys are just shooting the shit, which is a very informal way of saying just talking about nothing and everything, nothing important, this and that, talking about this and that. So, imagine a beautiful woman walks in and she walks up to the bar, and you say to your mates, do you guys think I’m to be a smooth talker and be able to chat this girl up and successfully get her phone number? And they might say, mate, she’s out of your league. So, she is way too good for you. You’ve got Buckley’s chance of getting her number. There is no hope. You have no hope of getting her number. You’ve got Buckley’s.
So, that’s the expression ‘to have Buckley’s chance’, guys. It means to have little to no chance of something occurring, so no prospect whatsoever.
Let’s go through a listen and repeat exercise here, guys, now where this is your opportunity to practice your Australian pronunciation or just your English pronunciation in general, but listen and repeat after me. This is a shadowing exercise, okay, guys? So, I was chatting to one of my students today called Lalin. I was chatting to him. Hopefully, he’s listening, and he was asking me about shadowing exercises and why I think they are important for pronunciation, and how to do them. So, the key here is to listen carefully to how I say these words and these phrases, and then to try and repeat them exactly as I say them in the blank space that follows these phrases. So, listen and repeat after me, guys.
Listen & Repeat:
To have
To have Buckley’s
To have Buckley’s chance x 5
I’ve got Buckley’s chance
You’ve got Buckley’s chance
He’s got Buckley’s chance
She’s got Buckley’s chance
We’ve got Buckley’s chance
They’ve got Buckley’s chance
It’s got Buckley’s chance
Great job, guys. Great job! And I really really really recommend using this expression at some point in Australia with other Australians, because I think you’re going to see them light up a bit, they’ll smile, when they hear you say this expression. It’s a very cool Australian expression.
Aussie Fact:
So, anyway, let’s get into the Aussie fact today, guys, and today I wanted to talk about convict history in Australia. So, the convicts. When did they get here? Why were they brought here? And I also wanted to talk a little bit about the kinds of crimes that would get you sent here as a convict. Okay.
So, the convicts first arrived on Australian soil in 1788 with the arrival of The First Fleet, a group of 11 ships, six of which carried convicts from England to Australia. So, the ships departed on the 13th of May the year before. So, they departed in 1787 on the mission of founding the first penal colony and European settlement in Australia.
So, this occurred because the English had previously tried to send convicts to America, but the American-English war had obviously taken place and England was no longer in a position to do that. So, they had to find somewhere else to send their convicts and set up a penal colony, and so they decided on Australia, which had been quote-unquote “discovered” by James Captain Cook, or at least claimed, stolen from the indigenous people, in 1770. So, 18 years beforehand. Anyway, The First Fleet comprised 11 ships: two Royal Navy vessels; three store ships, with all the resources, food, all of that sort of stuff on there; and then six convict ships. And these 11 ships carried between 1000 and 1500 convicts, marines, seamen, civil officers, and free people.
So, The Fleet left England and it sailed south west, and it went to Brazil, it went to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, and then it went east to Cape Town in South Africa, and then it went on to Australia via the Great Southern Ocean, finally reaching Botany Bay and arriving over the period of the 18th to the 20th of January, 1788. So, the entire trip lasted between 250 to 252 days. So, two thirds of the year. How crazy’s that? About eight months is how long this trip took.
So, how did convicts find themselves on The First Fleet? So, many of the convicts were transported for petty crimes, usually involving theft or something trivial like that. The most severe crimes of things like rape and murder wouldn’t actually end up making you a convict, because at the time England had the death penalty and they would just put you to death. You would get a capital punishment for the crimes of rape and murder. So, there’s a big list of crimes committed by convicts at the website convictrecords.com.au/crimes, and I had a look at this and I’ll link it in the transcript. And it was just mind blowing. You can see all the different crimes that convicts were convicted of that got them effectively all seven years transportation, which means they were transported to Australia and their sentence was seven years of labour, effectively, and a large portion of these crimes were petty theft. So, the theft of incredibly trivial items. For instance, stealing feathers, stealing cheese, stealing a hairbrush, stealing a hat, stealing a case of tea, and stealing a handkerchief. Stealing a handkerchief. The kind of thing that you blow your nose into, a tiny piece of cloth, could get you seven years and transported to, effectively, back then what would have been another planet.
And so, I looked and there were 112 convicts, in the history of convicts sent to Australia, who were sent here because of stealing a handkerchief.
Anyway, the crazy thing, too, was that a lot of these convicts were children. So, incredibly young age didn’t spare you from being convicted of these kinds of crimes and being sent to another continent. So, let’s talk about some of these young convicts.
John Hudson was a young orphaned chimney sweep of only nine years old in 1783 when he received seven years transportation for breaking and entering and stealing a linen shirt, five silk stockings, a pistol, and two aprons. And then he was 13 years old when he finally got transported to Australia on The First Fleet.
The youngest girl was also 13 years old, and she received seven years transportation for a similar crime of stealing a linen gown, a silk bonnet, and a bath cloth cloak. And she pawned these and took the money and was obviously caught.
So, that’s crazy, that blows my mind, that 13-year-old children could be sent on such a devastating voyage by themselves to a completely different continent.
The oldest convict was Dorothy Handland who is 82 years old when she first stepped foot on Australian shores, and again, she was given, you guessed it, seven years transportation, but this time for perjury. So, she falsely accused a man, named William Till, of stealing all of her belongings, and it was found that she was lying, she perjured herself, and was convicted, and sent to Australia. Strangely enough, Dorothy Handland departed from England in 1787 aged 61, but during the voyage a man named Arthur Bowes Smyth estimated that her age was actually 82. So, obviously something weird was happening with her documents there, and she left England at 61 and got to Australia at the age of 82, despite the voyage only taking eight months.
Interestingly about Handland, she was the first European to commit suicide in Australia, where in 1789 during a fit of despair she hanged herself from a gum tree at Sydney Cove.
So, again guys, you can check out some of these crazy crimes that were committed by convicts at convictrecords.com.au/crimes. It’ll be linked in the transcript.
Originally, convict Australians were little more than slaves, at least during their time served for their crimes, and they only became free after this time was served. For many decades to follow, being a convict, or even having convict ancestry, was a big taboo. It was a social stigma and a source of shame, and the upper-class Australians would look down on anyone who had any kind of convict blood in them. Nowadays though, it’s the complete opposite. Many Australians find it a great source of pride to be able to trace their ancestry back to the first convicts that came to Australia.
Anyway, guys, that’s it for today, and I’m sure you’re wondering, do I have any convict ancestry? Unfortunately for me, I don’t believe I do. Both of my parents loved doing family history stuff, and I think from what I’ve heard from them when I’ve chatted to them and asked them about this we don’t have any direct ancestry with convicts. We’re probably related to some indirectly, but we trace our lineage back to England in, I think, the mid to late 1800s.
So, that’s it for today’s episode, guys. I hope you have a great weekend and I will chat to you soon. Peace out, guys.
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Like A Native: A fair call / Fair call!
In this Aussie English episode of Like A Native I teach you guys how to use the phrases “A fair call” or just “Fair call!”.
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Like A Native – A fair call / Fair call!
Hey guys. Welcome to this episode of Aussie English. I hope you’ve all been well. I hope you’ve been having a good week or a good month or a good year. I hope everything’s going well on your end.
Sorry I haven’t been doing a lot of episodes more recently. I’ve been a little busy with work and a little bit busy with trying to write up this PhD, and so, I am a little bit swamped at the moment. And, “To be swamped” is sort of an idea or a way of saying that you have a lot to do or that you’re sort of… almost like you’ve got too much to do, and the idea is obviously that you’re getting submerged in a swamp, I guess, and a swamp is this kind of… like a source of water where you can walk out into it and it’s really muddy and you can kind of sink into the swamp. So, if you “Get swamped by something” whether it’s work, you can imagine the work pilling up on your desk and you’re sort of getting submerged in the work, that idea of getting submerged in the mud in the swamp sort of translates across into this expression “To be swamped”. Anyway, there’s a little free expression for you, “To be swamped by something”.
What have I been up to this week? I’ve been studying, I’ve been working, I’m getting a lot more back into training jiu-jitsu, and I got pulled out of bed this morning at around 9 O’clock with my housemate who’s the manager of the gym that I train at, and he wanted to go in and train today, it’s Saturday. And so, we headed in this morning, and yeah, it was really good. [I’m a] bit tired now, [I’m a] bit beaten up, [I’ve] got a few bruises on my face, but [I’m] glad I exercised. So, [I’m] feeling better. [I] came home and had something to eat and then [I] thought that I should probably write an episode and make something for you guys to listen to this week. So, here it is.
Today, I wanted to discuss the expression “A fair call”, and I got the idea for doing this expression or this Like A Native little sort of interjection or saying, this thing that natives say quite a bit, “A fair call” or “Fair call”, when I was interviewing my folks trying to do some of these Chinwag episodes that you may or may not have seen on YouTube. So, if you haven’t seen those definitely jump on YouTube and have a look at the Aussie English Chinwags episodes that I’ve done with my parents where they talk about how they would use certain expressions and phrases in English as a native. And so, I sort of sit them down and ask them on the spot without them being able to research it or think about it ahead of time. So, they have to sit there, I give them an expression and I ask them how would they use it, what does it mean to them, and can they give me examples of situations where it would be used? So, I think this is definitely the kind of thing that will help you guys improve your English whether it’s Australian English or just English in general. So, definitely check those episodes out. A lot of them are only 30 seconds to maybe a minute or a minute and a half long. And when I was doing some of these expressions, because I wrote down maybe 10 of the most recent Like A Native and Expression episode phrases and expressions that I’d done, because I wanted to go over the same expressions so that you guys get to reinforce that work you’ve already done, they also added in a few other ones, and “A fair call” was one of them, and I think “Nailed it!” was another one. So, if you remember “Nailed it!” means to get something right or that you’re correct, you know, if someone says something that is definitely correct you could say “You nailed it”. “Nailed it!”.
But, “A fair call”, they threw that in there. And “A fair call” is… it’s said when something someone says is correct, that you agree with it. So, if someone says something that is definitely correct, you may not have thought of it previously or it may surprise you, but when you realize, “Oh my gosh, that’s correct!” you can say, “Oh! That’s a fair call!”, and you can also just say “Fair call!” as a response. So, that’s said as a response to someone when they say something you definitely agree with. If someone says, “Oh it’s really hot today we should go to the beach” that sounds like a good decision, it sounds like a good choice, a good call. So, you could say “Fair call!” or you could say that “That is a fair call!”, as in they’ve said something that is a good decision, fair enough, a good call. So, yeah, it’s another way of sort of saying “That’s a good decision, that’s a good choice, fair enough, good call.” And “A call”, to define “Call” it’s just a choice, a decision of some kind. So, it’s that idea of agreeing with someone that has said something and you definitely think that’s the right choice, it’s the right decision, you agree with them, it’s true.
So, as usual, we can go through some examples of situations where you may say this phrase or you may hear this phrase.
And so, the first example could be that you were planning to take the dog for a walk. So, you’ve got a nice new puppy at home. It’s been a really nice day up until now and you want to take him outside, take him down to the beach, throw a stick for him, play fetch for a bit, but as soon as you walk outside you notice that it’s actually getting pretty bad weather wise. So, it’s clouded over, it looks like it’s going to rain, and when you go back inside, because you’ve decided “I’m not going to walk the dog. I might do it later”, you go back inside, you hang the leash up on the wall, and your husband or your wife or someone else, whoever else is in the house and thought that you were going to walk the dog could say to you, “Aren’t you going to go take the dog for a walk?” and you could tell them that “Well, I walked outside and it looks like it’s about to rain, and to be honest I’d prefer to walk the dog when the weather clears up where I’m not going to get saturated, where I’m not going to get wet from the rain.” And that person could say to you, after you’ve told them your decision, “That’s a fair call.” So, they could say, “Ah… you make a good point. That’s a fair call. It’s a fair decision. It’s a good choice. That’s the right course of action. So, definitely wait for the weather to get better and then go for a walk.” And they could also just say, “Ah! Fair call! Fair call!” as in “Ah good decision.”
So, the second example, you’re going to the movies with a friend but you haven’t decided which film that you guys are going to see yet. So, you thought “I’ll go to the movies with my mate, and once we get there we’ll see what’s available, what’s out, what time it’s on and then we’ll decide what we’re going to go and see.” So, as soon as you walk into the theatres, into the cinema, the first thing you guys see is a poster for Star Wars and the other person that you’re with sees a poster for Ice Age, and you guys are like arguing over which one of these films you’d rather see. And then all of a sudden one of you notices that the new Leonardo Di Caprio film is out. So, say The Revenant that recently came out, I think, this year. And seeing as both of you guys are say massive fans of Leonardo Di Caprio, you’d much prefer to see that than Star Wars or Ice Age. One of you could suggest, “Well, let’s go see The Revenant. It’s Di Caprio’s new film. We both love Di Caprio. Let’s go see The Revenant!” and the other person could say, “Oh! Definitely. Fair call!” or “That’s a fair call! It’s got Leo in it. Let’s see that instead. We’ll both like that. Fair call!”.
So, example number three. Say, you and your partner are going out for dinner. You go out for dinner each week and tonight is that night where you guys go out for dinner, but until tonight you hadn’t decided what kind of food you were going to have, you hadn’t decided which restaurant you were going to go to. And so, as you’re getting ready you guys could be chatting and you could be saying, “Oh, I really want to go to this nice Japanese place in the Melbourne CBD.” And the other person could say, “What about Italian. We could go to Lygon st!” which is a street just outside of the CBD that is renowned for its Italian restaurants and cuisine. And the other one could say, “Well, we had Italian last week. Don’t you remember? We should go and check out this Japanese place. It’s on the top floor of a building. It’s said to have a beautiful view of the city. I think we’d both really enjoy that.” And the other person could say, when they remember, “Oh well yeah, ok we had Italian last week”, they could say, “Oh! Fair call! Let’s do that then!” So, “That’s a fair call. We did have Italian last week and this Japanese place sounds amazing. Fair call! Let’s go to this Japanese place, check out the view, have some different food. You made a fair call. It’s a good decision. Let’s do it!”.
And, I thought just as a little side example, when I was writing these sort of out in dot-point forms to think about the examples that I was going to include in this episode I remembered a little story from my childhood where my sister went to AFL, the Australian Football League, a football match with my dad, and I don’t remember if I was at this one or if I just heard this story later, but so… when my sister was young she used to go for a team called The Bulldogs. So, The Bulldogs is a team, you may’ve heard of them. They finally won the premiership this year after I think a big big big drought. So, they hadn’t won in a very long time, we call that a drought, like no water, no rain. They had had a sixty year drought, I think. I think it was in the mid to late 50s or even the early 60s when they last one a premiership. And so, The Bulldogs won this year. Anyway, my sister initially barracked for, she supported The Bulldog football team, and she liked them, and so my dad took her to a Bulldogs’ football match and I think The Bulldogs were taking on, they were competing against the team The Kangaroos, so North Melbourne, The North Melbourne Kangaroos. And, my dad gave my sister some money to go and buy a flag so that she could wave the flag in support of The Bulldogs. And so, my sister went away and my dad was sitting there watching the game. My sister went away, [she] bought the flag, [she] came back and she had the wrong flag. She had The Kangaroo flag. So, a blue and white flag with a kangaroo on it instead of a blue white and red flag with a bulldog on it. And my dad’s initial thought was, “Oh no, she’s accidentally bought the wrong flag.” You know she didn’t realise that that was The Kangaroo one and not The Bulldog’s flag. And when my dad said to her, you know, “You’ve got the Kangaroo flag there” my sister said, “Yeah I know! I preferred this one. It looked better”. And so, since then my sister’s gone for The North Melbourne Kangaroos instead of The Bulldogs. And this is a situation where I can imagine my sister saying “Well, this flag looked better so now I go for this team” and my dad laughing, you know, and humorously saying in response, “Fair call!” like “Ok, well, that’s fair enough. Good decision. That’s, you know, as rational a decision that you could make to pick a team to support as any one else. So, fair call! That’s a fair call! Good choice.”
So, that’s it for today guys. I hope you enjoy this episode. Listen a few times. If you have any questions about certain phrases, certain expressions that I’ve used in here, because I have used a few, definitely send me a message or a comment on Facebook and if you’d like me to do an episode on any of these expressions that I’ve dropped, that I’ve used in this episode, or any other expressions that you guys are having difficulty with or that you’ve heard used but aren’t necessarily quite sure about how to use them yourself, and you want a bit of clarification, please feel free to send me a message or even mention it in a comment on Facebook as the podcast is here for you guys. It’s here to help you guys improve your English. So, first and foremost, I want to create material that you guys want help with and that you enjoy. So, anyway, this one’s gone long enough. I hope you’re enjoying it guys. Give me feedback, and I’ll see you soon! All the best guys.
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Check out all the other recent Like A Native episodes below:
When you make a phone call to book a restaurant table or call a call centre, what is the best way to greet the receptionist?
Can I say “Good morning”, “Good afternoon”, “G’day” or “How are you going”?
Thanks
Hey Ming,
You could use any of those. Good morning and Good afternoon are more formal, whereas G’day and How’re you going are more friendly and informal.
Pete