In this episode of Aussie English I answer the question “Why is Australia called “Down Under”?”. Do you already know the answer?
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Like A Native: Expressive sounds: Wow!, Phew!, Oh!, etc.
In today’s episode of Like A Native I teach you guys a number of different expressive sounds used in English by native speakers, such as, “Wow!”, “Phew!”, and “Oh!”.
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Like A Native: Expressive sounds: Wow!, Phew!, Oh!, etc.
G’day guys. Welcome to this episode of Like A Native. Today I want to teach you guys different kinds of expressive sounds or expressions that you would say as a native English speaker. And this is something that it’s not necessarily imperative for you to learn but it will definitely make you sound a lot more native-like when you speak English. So, anyway, let’s just dive in and get started.
So, the first one here guys is “Ow” or “Ouch”, and this is often said when you get hurt. So, if you hit your thumb with a hammer whilst trying to hammer a nail into a piece of wood you could say, “Ow! Ouch! Ow! Ow!”. If you stubbed your toe against the leg of your lounge room coffee table when you got up off the couch, you could hit your toe and it could really hurt, you could say, “Ouch! Ow! Ow! Ow!’. That’s the kind of sound that we use when we hurt ourselves.
“Oh” is often said when you’re surprised. So, when you suddenly realise something, “Oh! I remember!” or “Oh! Is that it? Is that what you mean?” or “Oh crap! Pete’s here!” you know, if you come into a room and suddenly you’re friend’s here you could be like, “Oh crap! Oh wow! Oh geez! Pete’s here! Oh! Pete’s here!”. It’s that sort of expression of surprise, you know, you’re really shocked, “Oh! Oh!”.
You can also use the sort of expression of “Oh” when you’re frustrated. So, you’ve asked someone to help you to do something but they keep making errors or are really clumsy. You could say, “Oh… don’t worry about it… Oh… don’t worry about it”. It’s more of like a sigh in this case. It’s like an “Ohhh… Oh…. Don’t worry about it. Forget it. Oh… Jesus… don’t worry. It’s all good. Oh!” But it’s kind of spelt the same way. So, it’s an “O-H”, “Oh”.
“Ah” is a sudden realisation, “Ah”, “A-H”. Again these aren’t really written. They’re kind of just said. So, when you suddenly realise something or you understand something for the first time. Say, you’ve just figured out a math problem, you’ve just solved it. You could say “Ahhhh! Ok, ok, I get it now! Ahhh!”. And this one as well you could say “Oh”. So, “Oh” or “Ah”, it’s that kind of expression of understanding or realisation. “Ahhhh I get it!” “Ohhhh I get it!” It’s that “Oh” or “Ah” sound. “Oh”, “Ah”.
Another one is “Ah”, “Um” or “Eh”, and these are all sounds someone says when they’re speaking in the middle of a sentence and they’re trying to indicate that they want to continue to speak, and you’ll probably have heard me say this quite a bit in these episodes when I’m thinking. So, I’ll often say “Eh” or “Um” or “Ah”, and, yeah, so let’s give you some examples. “I think I’m going to… um… go home now.”. “I think I’m going to… ah… go home now.”. “I think I’m going to… eh… go home now.”. So, it’s just a kind of sound that you make to indicate that you haven’t finished speaking. And it is the kind of thing that people will try and encourage you not to do if you’re public speaking, if you’re giving a talk or a presentation or something. It’s the kind of thing that we always get reminded, you know, don’t say “Ah” all the time. Don’t say “Um” all the time.
“Oh wow” or “Wow”, this is another one where you would say it when you’re surprised or impressed by something like “Oh wow! He just won that competition” or “Wow! You look amazing today! Oh wow! Look how good you look!”. “Oh wow! It’s time to go! We’re almost there!”. “Oh wow! It’s pretty late. We should probably leave!”.
“Yay” or “Woo”. “Yay” or “Woo” are often say when you’re happy or you have succeeded doing something. So, you might say “Woo! My team just won!” or “Yay! My team won!”. “Woo! I’m going to go and see my parents this weekend!” or “Yay! I’m going to go see my parents this weekend!”, “Yay! Woohoo! Wooo!” These are different sounds that you’ll make in English when you’re excited about something, you’re happy and you’ve succeeded.
The word “Man” or the word “Geez”. “Man” or “Geez” is often said as an exclamation. If you’re really hungry you might say, “Geez! I’m hungry!” or you could say, “Man! I’m hungry!”. If someone’s annoying you, you could say to them “Geez! You’re annoying” or you could say “Man! You’re annoying”.
“Aww” or “Naww”. “Aww”, “Naww”, these are often said when something is cute or adorable. So, imagine that someone’s just brought a new puppy home for you, you could say “Aww! Your puppy’s so cute!” or “Naww! Your puppy’s so cute!”. So, that’s “Aww” or “Naww”.
And the very last one that I’ll do today is “Phew”, and this is said when you’re feeling relieved about something. So, imagine you watch on TV that a boy has gone missing, and they’ve been looking for him for a few days. They finally find him. So, you’re relieved that they found him. You could say, “Oh! Phew! They found the missing boy alive.”. Or say that you want to watch a football match on TV and you thought you were going to arrive home late after it started. You could say, “Oh phew! We got home in time to watch the footy match!”, “Phew!” if you get home before it actually starts.
So, these are some of these different words that you can use that are kind of expressive sounds. They’re not really correct words, and they’re often only used in speech. You’d never write these. You would say them. You might write them only if you’re quoting something that someone said in a book of fiction or something. Anyway, that’s it for today guys. I hope you liked this episode. I hope it helps. And I’ll chat to you soon. Enjoy!
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Ep054: Expression – Has A Cat Got Your Tongue?
In today’s episode I explain what the expression “Has a cat got your tongue?” means, as well as how and when to use it.
Download the full PDF transcript here.
Ep054: Expression – Has a cat got your tongue?
G’day guys. Welcome to this episode of Aussie English.
Today is yet another expression involving animals. I’m sure you’re probably getting sick of this guys but at the moment I love these and I want to pump them out, I want to make as many of these episodes to help you guys as I can, and again, just to remind you, these are all phrases that I hear or that I use really often. So, they’re definitely the kinds of things that you are going to encounter, that you’re going to come across when speaking English with native English speakers. And I might add that most, if not all, of these phrases are used ubiquitously, so across English English, American English, New Zealand English, Australian English. For the most part, these phrases are used by all of us. So, they’re not just specific Aussie English phrases.
So, today’s phrase is “Has a cat got your tongue?” “Has a cat got your tongue?” So, the phrase, or expression, or idiom “has a cat got your tongue” is said to someone when something’s been said, something’s been asked of that person and they remain silent. So, someone is silent, they’re not talking when they’re expected to be speaking. So, if you’ve… if you’ve asked someone something and they didn’t respond or they can’t response or they’re choosing not to respond, you could say to that person “has a cat got your tongue?”
So, let’s go through and define a cat and tongue.
“A cat”, it’s an animal. Similar to a dog it’s a mammal. It’s got fur, it’s got a tail, it’s got claws. Um… it meows, “meow, meow, meow”. That’s a cat. It’s a domestic animal. They catch mice and rats. Um… they tend to hate dogs. They don’t always get along with dogs, and they… they fight from time to time. And so that’s a cat.
The word “tongue”, the word “tongue”, is the part of your mouth inside of your mouth. It’s the large muscle that you use to make sound, or that you use to change the sound when you speak in order to speak. So, it’s the little bit of um… muscle in between your teeth. You lick things with your tongue. That’s a tongue.
So, when would you use the expression, “Has a cat got your tongue?” You could do it when say you’ve asked someone a question that’s difficult or not. Um… say, say, I lost my father’s watch, you know. It’s a really expensive watch and I lost it. He asked if I knew where it was and I said nothing. I just stayed silent and looked at him confused like I didn’t know what to say, you know, I could even just say, “Ehhhhh”. He could say to me “Ah… has a cat got your tongue?” So, it’s sort of like, “why aren’t you talking? Tell me the answer. What’s going on? Has a cat got your tongue?”
Another example could be say, your mother is asking you as a boy for example who’s been seeing a girl and she wants to know more information about this girl, and she could be probing, she could be prodding you with a whole bunch, with a whole lot of questions, saying, you know, “Who is this girl? Where’s she from? What are her parents like?” you know, um…, “What does she look like? What does she do?” And if you don’t reply, you just remain silent when your mother is obviously expecting you to say something and to tell her a little bit about this girl that you are seeing, that you are dating, that you’re going out with, um… she could say do you, you know, “Why aren’t you telling me anything? Has a cat got your tongue? Speak up. Why are you silent? Tell me all of these things. Has a cat got your tongue? What’s up?”
So, let’s go through some exercises guys, and today we’ll just do some repetition ones where you guys can practice after me. And the first one is:
“Cat got your tongue?”
“Cat got your tongue?”
“Cat got your tongue?”
“Cat got your tongue?”
“Cat got your tongue?”
“Cat got your tongue?”
“Cat got your tongue?”
So, you’ll notice here too with this expression guys, it’s a question. So I’m raising my intonation at the end of the phrase because I’ve turfed, I’ve chucked, I’ve removed the part of the phrase, “Has a cat got your tongue”. So, you can often here it as, “Cat got your tongue?” where they’ve removed the “has a” and I raise my intonation at the end of the sentence. So, I say, “Cat got your tongue?” In order to show people that it’s a question, that I expect an answer. Where as if you said, “Cat got your tongue” it sounds like it’s a statement not a question. I’ll also mention in there when I said “cat got your tongue”, when I say this quickly, because of the “t” at the end of “got” and the “y” at the start of “your”, when you have those come together in sentences “got your” it often becomes a “gotcha”. So you’ll turn the “T-Y” there on the end and the start of the two words “got” and “your” into a “cha” to make it, um… to make them link better so that they kind of… they’re smoother when you speak. So I’ll say, “Cat gotcha tongue?” instead of, “Cat got your tongue?” See how I have to sort of say, “Cat got your tongue”. It’s a lot easier when I speak quickly to just say, “Cat gotcha tongue”.
“Cat gotcha tongue”
“Cat gotcha tongue”
“Cat gotcha tongue”
So, that’s the first exercise guys. The next one will be two questions. One after the other. The first being, “What’s the matter?”, “What’s the matter?”. And then the second one being the full, “Has a cat got your tongue?” So this is what you will hear together quite often when someone says to you “What’s the matter? Has a cat got your tongue?”.
“What’s the matter? Has a cat got your tongue?”
“What’s the matter? Has a cat got your tongue?”
“What’s the matter? Has a cat got your tongue?”
“What’s the matter? Has a cat got your tongue?”
“What’s the matter? Has a cat got your tongue?”
“What’s the matter? Has a cat got your tongue?”
“What’s the matter? Has a cat got your tongue?”
And so I’ll add here, guys, that because I have “has a” at the front of the sentence “has a cat got your tongue?” it’s obvious it’s a question. So, you can raise the intonation. You can say “Has a cat got your tongue?”. You can raise it there. You can say “Has a cat got your tongue?”. Or you can have it neutral or going down. So, like “Has a cat got your tongue?” or “Has a cat got your tongue?”. It doesn’t matter because you’ve got the “has a” at the start. Whereas if you remove the “has a” and you’re saying more of a statement that you want to be a question, there’s no verb at the start of it to make it obvious that it’s a question, you have to raise your intonation. “Cat got your tongue?”, “Has a cat got your tongue?”, “Has a cat got your tongue?”.
So, they’re the different phrases that we’ll do for today’s episode guys. I hope you enjoyed it. Again, come on Facebook, send me an email, jump on the website. Let me know what you think. And if you have any questions about issues you’re having with um… English, whether it’s Aussie English or just English in general please let me know and I would love to do an episode on any of your problems, phrases, slang words, whatever it is. Until next time guys have a nice one!
If you liked this expression episode guys then please jump over here and check out all the other Aussie English expression episodes to help you improve your Aussie English.
Also be sure to come over to the Aussie English Facebook page and chat to the many other Aussie English learners. Practice a few of these words or phrases, ask any questions you may have, and be a part of the conversation! All the best guys!
