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AE 511 – Expression: Not Have a Bar of It

By Admin — 2 days ago

Learn Australian English in this expression episode of The Aussie English Podcast where I teach you to use the expression NOT HAVE A BAR OF IT.

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AE 511 – Expression: Not Have a Bar of It

I’m Barry, living in American River, Kangaroo Island. I trap feral cats and give them another home. I keep a record of every cat that I catch and the total’s 1438.

I’m not that fussed if people have their cats. I just have the thing for the feral cat. People think I’m a cat hater, but I’m not. We just hate the feral ones. (The) domestic cat just sits and meows and says “Meow, feed me!”, but it’s the feral ones.

The cats that I’ve removed will probably have killed millions of birds. Birdlife around the river has dramatically improved.

****

G’day,
guys!

Far out! Far out! It is a boiling day today. It is sweltering. It is steaming. It is incredibly hot. So, yesterday, it was like 34 degrees, I think, today’s 36, and I know some of you are from places around the world where that is nothing.You know, I understand that, but for me in Australia, especially, in the very, very south part of Australia, the mainland, in Victoria, 36 is getting pretty hot. Although, yeah, we’ve had some days in the past that got up to 48. I remember it being 51 degrees inside my car at one point in the past and that was just ridiculous. Anyway.

It’s been hot, and I guess, I’ve been suffering from it more because I’ve been moving house. So, as you guys may or may not know, Kel and I recently moved into our new house, in fact, we moved in two days ago, but didn’t stay there the night, because we had all our stuff at my parents’ place still, the bed stuff and everything, so we stayed here, and they had air conditioning. So, that was one thing. But then last night or yesterday, we went down there and stayed the night there and I’ve been running around like a headless chook, running around like crazy, buying second-hand furniture and all sorts of things off Gumtree and Market Place on Facebook. You may have seen the video I did on that on YouTube. So, lots of collecting stuff, filling the car up, going to the new house, unloading the car, and doing that in the heat has been a massive chore. Anyway. I won’t rabbit on too much about that, but that’s what I’ve been up to.

Today, the movie scene at the very start there, guys, was a clip from a Vice documentary called ‘Shooting Cats’. Now, Vice is a really good organisation.They do lots of these interesting sort of docos and news articles, news items online that you can find if you just search, Vice, V-I-C-E. This documentary was about the problem of cats in Australia and the hunters who tried to reduce the numbers of these feral cats. So, it’s a contentious issue. You know, the house moggy, your average house cat, vs. the feral cat, the native animal assassin inAustralia.

So, watch that doco ‘Shooting Cats’. It’s about 20 or 30 minutes long. It’s a great chance to learn about Australian culture and to introduce yourselves to a few of Australia’s more colorful characters. Strong accent warning too. And there’ll be a link to that in the transcript. Anyway.

That aside, guys, this is the Aussie English Podcast, the number one podcast for anyone learning Australian English or anyone learning English in general and trying to get from intermediate to advanced and beyond in their English abilities.

So, it’s brought to you by The Aussie English Classroom. That is my online website with the courses that I put together for these episodes and a lot of other content to help you improve pronunciation, expand your vocab, and learn these expressions, as well as meet a lot of other people who are also learningEnglish. That you can sign up for at TheAussieEnglishClassroom.com and is just one point for your first month so get in there and give it a go. If that’s not your thing and you’re just after the transcripts for these episodes and theMP3s and you want to download them so you can listen and read anywhere, anytime, go to TheAussieEnglishPodcast.com, and click sign up, and for the price of one coffee per month you will get access to all of the transcripts, all of the MP3s for all of these episodes.Anyway.

That aside, let’s get into the Aussie joke for today, guys. So, considering we had the doco at the start they’re ‘Shooting Cats’. I thought, you know what, I will find a cat joke. Okay, so here’s the joke:

Why don’t cats like online shopping? Why don’t cats like online shopping online?Why don’t they like shopping online?

They prefer a ‘cat-alogue’. They prefer a ‘cat-alogue’.

Do you get it? Cat-alogue, right? So. you can shop online via websites, but you can also shop using catalogues, right, those sort of like magazine-style things, but for just selling products. So, that’s the joke.

So, today’s expression, guys. Today’s expression is ‘to not want a bar of something’ or ‘to not want a bar of it’ or ‘to not have a bar of something’ or ‘to not have a bar of it’, right. You’ll hear this in many different ways.Sometimes it will be with the verb ‘have’ sometimes with ‘want’, sometimes it’ll be ‘of something’. Sometimes you’ll just say ‘of it’ and this expression was suggested by Shiny in the Aussie English Classroom. Good job, Shiny. So, every week we suggest the expressions we want to vote on and the winning expression becomes the one for the week. Anyway.

Let’s get into it and define the different words in this expression.

So, obviously, ‘to have’, if you have something or you don’t have something that is that you possess the thing or you do not possess the thing, right. Like, I have a t-shirt on at the moment. I have two parents. I have a car. You know, I possess those things.

‘To want’. I am sure you will all know what ‘want’ is, guys, to desire something, to feel like something. You know, at the moment, I want it to be less hot. At the moment, I want a cold drink. ‘Want’.

And the last word there, guys, ‘a bar’. Now, I don’t exactly know why this has been used in this expression and what exactly it is referring to, but I would imagine that somehow it is referring to a long rigid piece of wood metal or similar material. So, for instance, if you go to jail, the… I guess, the metal sort of fence that is in front of your cell is made up of bars, right, bars of metal, bars of metal. So, it’s usually something that’s like long and thin, right. So, you could have a chocolate bar, right, a chocolate bar. So, if you don’t want a bar of something, I guess, in this case, it just means… ‘the bar’ means that you don’t want a part of that thing, right. I’m not 100% sure.Anyway.

Let’s go through the expression definition. So, ‘to not want a bar of something’. If you don’t want a bar of something, that is that you want nothing to do with that thing or it could even be someone. So, you want… you’re not interested at all in having anything related, to do, with that thing, right. So, I don’t want to be involved. I don’t want to… I just want nothing to do with it.Okay, I don’t want a bar of it. I want nothing to do with it.

And if you don’t have a bar of something, or if you’re not going to have a bar of something, you won’t have a bar or something, you wouldn’t have a bar of something, that can mean something slightly different meaning be unable to tolerate something, to dislike something, to not accept something, or to not allow something to happen. Okay.

So, let’s go through three examples of how I would use this expression or these expressions, right, to not want a bar of something and to not have a bar of something. Alright.

So, example number one. Imagine you’re a teenager, you’re at school, and the next class that you have to go to is PE, and ‘PE’ stands for Physical Education, right, so sports. So, maybe you’re a bit of a fat kid, you know, you’re a little bit chubby, you’re overweight, and you can’t run very well, you’ve always been a bit bad at sports, you know, you’re not very athletic, you’re not much of a jock, and you get out of breath really quickly. So, you really dislike exercise overall and you think it’s pointless and an unpleasant endeavor. In order to try and get out of PE class, you tell your teacher that you’ve got a trumpet lesson, and unfortunately, it clashes with the PE class, meaning it is on at the same time as the PE class. It clashes with it. So, you have to go and you have to do this trumpet lesson and you have to give the class amiss. However, the teacher knows how much you hate PE class and also that you’re not currently learning the trumpet, so that’s a bit of a lie, it’s a fib, you’ve made up that story, okay. So, although, you don’t want to have a bar of a class, because you hate it and want to get out of it, the teacher isn’t going to have a bar of your excuses and he won’t let you skip class. So, you don’t want a bar of PE class, you want to skip it, but the teacher isn’t going to have a bar of it, of your excuses, and makes you stay and do a class instead. So, you dislike PE class and you want to avoid it, you do not want a bar of it, but the teacher won’t allow you to do that, so he’s not having a bar of it. He’s not going to put up with you trying to skip class.

Example number two. Imagine you are a gymnast or maybe an athlete, you know, someone who likes to do parkour in the street where people run around the streets and treat stairs and other structures as a sort of obstacle courses to jump through and under and over, all of that sort of stuff. So, you were out training one day with your mates, but you had a fall and busted your leg, right, you hurt your leg on the concrete when you landed. It’s nothing too serious or severe, but after seeing the doctor you are told that you need to rest up, you need to take it easy, you need to recover, you need to recuperate, and give your leg a few weeks to heal before you go back to training. Despite the advice the doctor’s given you, you’re incredibly impatient and you can’t be bothered waiting. So, you want to go out and train a few days after the accident, but your leg is so sore that you can’t do it. Your leg isn’t going to have a bar of it. Your legs not going to allow you to do it, right. It doesn’t want anything to do with training. So, you might complain and say, Ah, my damn leg! I want to train, but it’s not having a bar of it, or it doesn’t want to have a bar of it.Your leg isn’t going to allow you to train, it won’t tolerate training, it won’t have a bar of it. You’ll just have to rest up for a week or so.

So, example number three. So, let’s use some informal Aussie slang. Okay. Imagine you’re a bloke, so an Australian male, and you’re married to a ripper of a sheila, right. And ‘a ripper of something’ means ‘an awesome thing’, and ‘a sheila is ‘a woman’. So, ‘a ripper of a sheila’, ‘a great woman’. You’re a bloke married to a ripper of a sheila, and you guys have a bun in the oven, she’s up the duff, she’s expecting, she’s pregnant, right. They’re all different expressions for pregnant. And your first little nipper, your first little child, is going to be born in a few months. So, when your little bub is born, ‘bub’ as in ‘baby’, you think it’s still all good for you to nick off down the pub, so ‘go down to the pub’, every other night or so, go to barbies with your mates, sink a few tinnies a few stubbies, so these are cans and glass bottles of beer, tinnies and stubbies, and leave your wife at home who’s a recent first time mum all home alone with the bub to deal with it all herself.If she snaps though and she won’t tolerate you doing this, she won’t put up with you leaving her all alone at home having fun with your mates, she’s not going to have a bar of it, right. She doesn’t want a bar of it. She’s not going to have a bar of it. So, she won’t allow you to just leave her at home all alone with the baby, with the bub, and let you go off and have fun with your mates. Maybe she’s upset too, because she thinks you don’t want a bar of her.So, maybe she thinks you want nothing to do with her. You’re annoyed with her, right. You don’t want a bar of her. You’re not interested in her or the baby.You want nothing to do with them, you dislike them, you don’t want a bar of them. So, being a ripper of a new dad, though, you decide you’ll take it easy, you’ll stay at home, you won’t party anymore, you’ll spend some quality time with your ripper of a sheila, with your wife, your missus, and your bub for the near future and you’ll do your duty. Good man. Good man. Alright, guys.

So, hopefully now, you understand the expression ‘to not want a bar of something ‘or ‘to not want a bar of it’ meaning to want nothing to do with it, with something, with someone. And the expression ‘to not have a bar of something’ or someone or ‘to not have a bar of it’, and this means to be unable to tolerate something, to dislike something, to not accept something, to not allow something to happen.

So, as usual, let’s go through a little listen and repeat exercise, guys, where you guys can practice your English pronunciation, okay. So, concentrate on the wayI’m linking these words, the intonation I’m using, the pronunciation, and remember, if you want to get the video breakdown of this exercise and all the other exercises in all the other courses, make sure that you sign up at theAussieEnglishClassroom.com.It’s just one dollar for your first month. The link will be in the transcript, but check it out if you want to work on your spoken English. Anyway, let’s go.

To have

To have a

To have a bar

To have a bar of

To have a bar of it x 5

I’m not going to have a bar of it.

You’re not going to have a bar of it.

She’s not going to have a bar of it.

He’s not going to have a bar of it.

We’re not going to have a bar of it.

They’re not going to have a bar of it.

It’s not going to have a bar of it.

Good job. There is a lot of connected speech going on there, right.

‘I’m not going_to have_a bar_of_it’.

There is a lot of connected speech. Remember, to check out the video guys in theAussie English Classroom to learn all of those tricks and tips. Anyway.

Let’s go through the Aussie English fact for the day guys and then we will finish up and I will let you continue on your merry way, with your day, you know, I’ll let you keep doing whatever it is that you’re doing.

So, as we had that little documentary at the start that I was showing you that was’Shooting Cats’ talking about feral cats in Australia, I thought that we could talk a bit about feral cats in Australia and why there’s such a problem. Okay.

So,
how did cats get to Australia?

Cats first arrived obviously with the first Europeans. So, on the first ships that came to Australia, from when the First Fleet arrived and onwards there were definitely domestic cats in Australia, and it’s even possible that the earlierDutch ship wrecks around Australia released domestic cats onto the continent.

So, why were they on ships in the first place, though?

Cats were on ships, as they had been used elsewhere for millennia, for pest control, right. They had been there in order to keep rats, mice, and even cockroaches at bay, to try and control those pest species, to control their numbers.

So, once the First Fleet arrived in Australia, these cats were brought ashore and allowed to sort of roam freely in the hopes of controlling pests around the early colony. So, these free-roaming domestic cats, obviously, escaped or just simply wandered off into the bush, but they were also intentionally released around farmland and homesteads in order to control rats and mice and rabbits as well. And rabbits are another problem pest in Australia that had also been released at about the same time as a source of food that people could hunt.

So, historical records date the introduction of cats to Australia to around 1804, and that the first cats became feral around Sydney by about 1820. And by the early 1900s, concern was expressed at the pervasiveness of the cat problem. So, they were already a cat problem by the early 1900s. Okay.

So, cats became feral and they lived in the bush in Australia, but why is that a problem? You know, why are cats… why are cute, cuddly nice little cats a problem in Australia?

So, terrestrially speaking, that means in terms of talking about the land as opposed to the ocean, cats as a group, a group of mammals, are some of the most successful predators to currently be inhabiting any parts of the world, so, the world’s environments and habitats, cats are an amazing predator. They are killing machines. In whichever environment you find them, they are stealthy assassins, stealthy killing machines, and despite being relatively newcomers toAustralia, they are as successful here as anywhere else in the world, potentially even more so, because so many of the animals in Australia are naive to cats, they do not understand that cats pose a threat, right, because they haven’t evolved with cats in the local environment.

So, cats also have very few predators, namely dingoes and wedge-tailed eagles, Australia’s largest eagle, and dingoes are native dog that we have here in Australia. So, where these native Aussies don’t live, the dingoes and the wedge-tailed eagles, cats reign supreme as the local apex predator, meaning the predator at the top of the food chain. They don’t have to fear anyone eating them and they can pretty much eat anything else.

Feral cats also have a vicious and voracious appetite. They will eat pretty much anything that lands on their plate, anything that walks in front of them, right, anything that they come across. Thus, they are very bad news for any ground-nesting birds, any lizards, small mammals, frogs, insects that also live on the ground, and they have likely underpinned, that is they have caused, the population collapse and extinction of many Australian native animals, which is quite tragic. So, they are currently thought to threaten the existence of at least 35 birds, 36 mammals, 7 reptiles, and 3 amphibians. Really, really tragic.

So, today there are estimated to be about 3.3 million pet cats in Australia, that is domestic cats, living in houses, and they’re found in about 29% of Aussie homes. In comparison, so keep that number in mind, 3.3 million pets, there is between 18 and 23 million feral cats living, prowling, stealthily moving about all corners of the Australian continent except tropical rainforest. So, there’s almost one cat… there’s potentially one cat per person roaming around free in Australia killing native animals.

So, what does this mean? Well, greater than 18 million cats need to eat a lot of food and that means 7 million native animals a day, to be precise, which equates to a staggering 27 billion animals per year that these cats eat in Australia. So, obviously, it is a heavy toll on the Australian environment, well, and the animals.

Besides the obvious threat to native wildlife that this ferocious apex predator poses, they also pose a significant threat to your average household moggy, your average household cat, as they can transmit diseases, they can fight and injure your cats as well. So, they’re a big, big, big problem. This is why manyAussies, including your average Joe to your hunters as well as your conservationists and environmentalists have declared war on the feral cat and want to see them eradicated from the wild.

So, though, you may compare them to your average domestic cat, they are completely different, they are a completely different beast. They are vicious wild animals that pose a threat to the existence of numerous native species.

If you own a cat in Australia, this is why it’s so important to keep them inside at all times so as to keep them away from other feral cats or people’s pet cats next door and also to prevent them running away, getting injured, and killing native animals too, most importantly. Anyway, guys.

I hope you enjoy this episode. I hope you sort of have a bit more of a deeper understanding of Australian culture and to understand why cats are an amazing pet, but it’s so important to keep them inside. Keep them locked up. Don’t just let them roam around freely. Okay. Anyway.

I hope you have an amazing weekend, guys, and I will chat to you soon. All the best. Peace out. See you later.

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AE 507 – Expression: Out of the Blue

By Admin — 2 weeks ago

Learn Australian English in this expression episode of The Aussie English Podcast where I teach you to use the expression OUT OF THE BLUE.

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AE 506 – Expression: Out of the Blue

A male surfer’s been killed in a shark attack near Wedge Island north of Perth. The attack happened just after 9 O’clock local time. Joining us now for more on the story is Sky News Perth reporter Michael Hopkins. Mike, what do we know at this stage?

Yes, hello. Well, what we know at this stage is that police have confirmed that it was, indeed, a fatal shark attack at Wedge Island, a holiday spot to Perth’s north at 9 O’clock this morning. Now, police are still searching the area with boats and also with quad bikes on the beach in a bid to find the surfer’s remains.

****

What is up, guys? What is up, you mob? How are you going? This is the first episode where you guys get to hear from ‘married Pete’.

So, how’s it going? Sorry, it’s been a little while with these expression episodes. I hope, as well, that you’ve got to check out the marriage and wedding episode that I published recently on the podcast and on YouTube. So, go and check that out if you haven’t and if you want to hear about all of what happened last weekend with Kel and me getting married. It was an amazing day. Anyway.

So, the video from the start there, guys, the video from the start was from Sky News, which you can check out at SkyNews.com.au. You can also check them out on YouTube and Sky News if you would like to watch stories about Australia and other parts of the world.

So, that was about a shark attack that occurred in Australia, and Australia is relatively well-known for having shark attacks relatively commonly, I guess. It’s up there in the most dangerous places in the world for sharks, but we will talk about that later on in the Aussie Fact as well as about some other animals that are more likely to kill you than sharks, and those animals might surprise you.

So, as usual guys, if you would like to support the podcast and you would like to get access to all the transcripts and all the MP3s for these episodes, make sure that you go to theAussieEnglishPodcast.com, go to the menu click ‘Sign Up’, and for just $4.99 per month you will get access to everything.

On top of that, guys, if you would like to get access to the Aussie English Classroom and all the courses that I make for these expression episodes with vocab, with expression videos, with pronunciation videos, and other courses too with Australian interviews and Australian pronunciation, make sure that you go to theAussieEnglishClassroom.com, and then click ‘Enroll’, and sign up and get in there and start levelling up your English.

I want to say a big thank you to all of you guys who signed up in the last week. We had been doing a special promotion for year memberships and 3-month memberships and a heap of you guys signed up. So, it is so good to see that the Aussie English Classroom is expanding and helping so many people. And it was a way of thanking you guys for your hard work and giving you an amazing deal when you sign up for three months or a year.

Now, those deals are gone, unfortunately, for now. They are gone. However, you are still able to sign up. You just won’t save the same amount of money. Okay. So, you’ll just jump over to theAussieEnglishClassroom.com if you’re interested in that. Anyway. Enough of talking about all that stuff, guys. Get that out of the way and let’s get into the Aussie English joke.

So, today’s expression’s ‘out of the blue’ and that have me thinking about sharks. You might see the connection later on. And so, I thought I’ll try and find a shark joke. Okay. So, here’s the joke.

What did the seal with a broken arm say to the shark? What did a seal with a broken arm say did the shark?

Do not consume if ‘seal’ is broken. It’s so stupid. Do not consume if ‘seal’ is broken.

I wonder if you get that. Alright, let me explain. So, often when you go to the shops, if you buy something that’s in a jar or in some kind of packet, quite often it will say that if the seal of the jar of the seal of the packet is broken, don’t consume the food inside, because it means that air has gotten in and there may be bacteria in there and the food may have gone off, it may have gone bad. Okay. So, you’ll often see, ‘Do not consume if seal is broken’.

So, the joke here is that obviously a seal is also that animal, you know, that lives in the ocean and jumps on the land sometimes to sunbathe than have babies, but they are often hunted by sharks, and so, the seal with a broken arm says to the shark, ‘don’t consume if seal is broken’. Jesus. Anyway, guys.

Today’s expression is ‘out of the blue’ and this came from Fatimah in the Aussie English Classroom. We have the Facebook group. We vote on these expressions. Fatimah suggested this one and she crushed it, she did very well, and it got voted on by everyone. Let’s go through and define the words in ‘out of the blue’.

So, ‘out of something’, right. ‘Out of something’. If you’re out of something, it’s that you’re coming out of something, you’re exiting something, right. It’s sort of the opposite of going into something, ‘out of something’ is leaving something, from being within something. Okay. Pretty self-explanatory. I’m sure you guys know what ‘out of something’ is.

‘The blue’. Now, this might be more confusing. ‘Blue’ is obviously a colour, right. The sky is blue. The ocean is blue. My eyes are blue. What else is blue? I don’t know. Other things are blue. Anyway. In this case, though, it doesn’t refer to the colour, specifically. It’s referring to the sky, which I guess is blue. But ‘the blue’ in this case means the sky.

So, let’s define the expression ‘out of the blue’. I wonder if you guys have heard this. Something happens out of the blue, right. If it’s… just appears out of the blue. What could that mean?

‘Out of the blue’ means out of nowhere, to appear unexpectedly or surprisingly, you know. You’re not expecting that thing to happen or to appear. It is appearing out of the blue. It’s appearing out of nowhere.

So, ‘the blue’ in this case refers to the sky, the blue sky, as we said, and usually, thunderstorms with, you know, thunder and lightning, don’t tend to happen when there’s a clear blue sky. But when it does happen, it’s a surprise that no one expects, it’s unexpected, it’s surprising. And apparently an older version of this expression was ‘a bolt out of the blue’ or ‘a bolt from the blue’, which referred to a completely unexpected and surprising appearance of a thunderbolt from a clear blue sky, right, out of nowhere.

So, we can use this literally, if someone, say, appears in front of you. They appear out of nowhere. You know, it’s shocking, it’s surprising, unexpected. But we can use it to for things that people say or maybe emotions, you know, non-physical things, right. So, if someone suddenly says something or burps or yawns or, you know, does something like that where you could say, oh, that was out of the blue. You know, I got upset and it was out of the blue.

So, let’s go through some examples, guys, to try and show you how I would use this expression in my day-to-day life. Okay.

So, example number one. Imagine that you are going to the beach with your mates. You’re about to hit the beach. You want to go for a surf or a body board or a body surf or maybe just a cheeky dip in the ocean at your favourite beach, your favourite Australian beach, maybe Bondi Beach or Bell’s Beach down here where Rip Curl Pro is often held each year, the surfing competition. So, you all dive into it. You pile out of the car when you get to the beach. You put your wettie is on, or maybe you’re wearing board shorts, you put your boardies on, your grab your boards and you dive into the water to catch a first wave. The waves are about six foot. It’s incredibly clean, you know, it’s not choppy, it’s not… the water’s not rough, there’s an offshore wind as well making the waves perfect, and you and your mates are carving it up each time you catch one of these incoming waves. When all of a sudden, out of the blue, one of your mates spots a large fin pop above the surface of the water a few metres away. Now, you all panic, you all frantically start swimming to shore and fear the worst. You think, oh no, it’s going to be a shark and it’s going to ruin our awesome day. But it turns out to be a lone dolphin who wants to join your ranks to catch a wave or two itself. So, it just appeared out of the blue, unexpectedly, out of nowhere.

Example number two. You’re at home on a weekend and you plan on binge watching your favorite TV show, right. I was doing this recently watching The Walking Dead. So, you’ve got to drink out of the fridge, you know, your favorite beer, your favorite soft drink, you’ve got some chips or your favorite snack, and you’ve kicked back on the couch and you’ve put the first episode on. So, you get through most of the show, but the tension starts to build, the show starts to climax, there’s a bit of suspense, something big is about to happen in the show when all of a sudden, out of the blue, the power goes off, the TV screen goes black. You might scream out, no! I wanted to see what was going to happen. You’ll lose it, you get upset, because you can’t see what was about to happen on the show, because out of the blue, unexpectedly, surprisingly, out of nowhere, the power went out.

Example number three. You’re at home one day cleaning the house after your kids have been playing and they’ve made a bit of a mess of the place, right. They’d been mucking around with finger-paint or food or something. They’ve made a mess. So, you’re busy cleaning away, when all of a sudden, the doorbell goes or someone knocks on the door. So, you go and open it up and it turns out that it’s a long-lost friend who you haven’t seen since you were at school, you know, maybe 20 years ago. So, you might say, Wow! How did you know I was here? That’s so out of the blue. Where did you come from? I haven’t seen you in yonks. I haven’t seen you in donkey’s years. I haven’t seen you in ages. But what an awesome surprise. It’s great to see you even if it is randomly and out of the blue.

So, hopefully guys you understand the expression now ‘out of the blue’. It is for something to appear physically or figuratively out of nowhere, unexpectedly, surprisingly.

So, as usual, let’s go through a listen and repeat exercise where you guys can practice your pronunciation. You can work on your Australian accent if that is something that you are trying to master at the moment. Listen and repeat after me. Or work on the accent that you are currently targeting, you know, British, US, whatever it is, and say these words with that accent. Let’s go.

Out
Out of
Out of the
Out of the blue x 5

It’s pretty interesting, actually. There’s quite a bit of pronunciation and connected speech modifying there when I say those words by themselves or when I say them together, right. Out, out of, out of the, out of the blue. That’s interesting.

Anyway, we’ll go over that more in the Aussie English Classroom pronunciation video for this episode, guys. Remember to sign up to that if you are interested in improving your English and improving your pronunciation. TheAussieEnglishClassroom.com. Oh! And I almost forgot, we’ll go through a sentence and now we will conjugate through, ‘I appeared out of the blue’, ‘you appeared out of the blue’. Okay, so listen and repeat after me.

I appeared out of the blue

You appeared out of the blue

He appeared out of the blue

She appeared out of the blue

We appeared out of the blue

They appeared out of the blue

It appeared out of the blue

Man, there’s a lot of t-flaps going on there. ‘It appeared out of the blue’.

Alright. Aussie English Fact for the day, guys. So, sharks. I wanted to talk about shark attacks as they tend to occur out of the blue, right, and they’re a common occurrence in Australia, at least the media would have you believe this. It tends to always be one on the on the TV every week or two, you hear about a shark attack. And then I want to talk about shark culling, okay? And this is a hot topic that pollies, politicians, are always yacking about on the telly as well.

Alright, so unsurprisingly shark attacks have been happening in Australia since the first humans arrived here nearly 50,000 or 60,000 years ago when they first surrendered to the enticing ocean waters that surrounded the continent. The earliest shark attack that was fatal that’s on record occurred in the early years of British colonisation in Port Jackson where an Aboriginal woman was swimming and she was, quote, “bitten in two” by a shark.

Between the years of 1958 and 2018, there have been 536 shark attacks in Australia, and we are number two on the list of shark attacks in the world. 73 of these shark attacks proved to be fatal to the victims. Australia comes in at number two with the US at number one with more than double the number of shark attacks at 1104. But despite this, there are actually twice as many deaths in Australia as there are in the US who recorded only 35 fatalities in the same period of time. Interesting. It seems that, statistically speaking, in Australia you have the highest chance of being attacked and killed by a shark than anywhere else in the world.

If you’re interested in taking your chances at the most dangerous beach in Australia, then I suggest heading off to Coffin Bay in South Australia whose name seems appropriate, although, there may not be enough of you left to warrant using a coffin.

Although, shark attacks often receive a lot of air time on national and state news, you’re far more likely to be killed by a bunch of other less-suspecting and cute and cuddly animals Down Under.

In 2011, Australia’s National Coronial Information System, or NCIS, released its first report into the trends and patterns surrounding animal-related deaths in Australia where they evaluated the first decade of this century from the years 2000 to 2010. The report discovered that horses, including ponies and donkeys, were Australia’s most deadly animal causing 77 deaths in a 10-year period. So, 7.7 deaths a year.

Next on the list of cute and cuddly but more likely to kill you than a shark were cows, including bulls and cattle, which accounted for 33 deaths, 16 of which, interestingly enough, were during motor vehicle accidents. So, to any cows listening, get off the bloody road!

Number three on the list was man’s best friend, dogs, who killed 27 people from attacks most of which were children under the age of four and the elderly.

And the final unsuspecting death bringer to humans on this list before sharks is the iconic and much beloved Australian kangaroo, which accounted for 18 deaths, albeit, indirectly, through motor vehicle accidents. So, again, Skippy, get off the road!

Place five and six was a tie with bees and sharks both accounting for 16 deaths in a 10-year period. So, 1.6 deaths per year. So, there you go.

Next time you’re second guessing taking a dip at Bondi Beach for fear of being devoured by the tooth-filled gnashing jaws of a shark, remember, that you’re much more likely to die from animals like horses, cows, kangaroos, dogs, and even bees than you are sharks.

So, why do sharks attack humans? Are they hunting us like the movie Jaws famously depicts? The answer is definitely no. Feeding is not the reason that sharks attack humans. In fact, humans don’t provide enough high-fat meat for sharks, which need a lot of energy to power their large muscular bodies. Sharks are just inquisitive animals and have no hands to explore the world around them and these unknown objects that they might stumble across bobbing around in the ocean. Therefore, they’re left with a jaw full of razor-sharp teeth to satiate their curiosity and explore any objects they may come across. Unfortunately, for us though, one simple exploratory nip from a large shark is usually a grievous and life-threatening injury to any human when coming from a great white, a tiger, or a bull shark, the three sharks that are the most common culprits for human fatalities.

Unfortunately, beach-loving Australians are insistent on partaking in one of their favorite pastimes, their favourite hobbies, enjoying the beaches and oceans around the country. And shark attacks often cause hysteria in the media and are quickly commandeered by politicians looking to gain favour and win votes by stirring up fear and promising easy solutions.

This is where the contentious issue of shark nets and drum lines come into play in Australia. Shark nets are often placed in the water to prevent sharks entering certain beaches, but they are criticised by environmentalists and conservationists alike who claim that these nets are extremely destructive to marine life and often harm or even kill sharks, which are an important part of a healthy marine ecosystem.

Drum lines are unmanned aquatic traps used to lure, capture, and kill large sharks using baited hooks connected to floating drums that indiscriminately kill any shark curious enough to take a bite of the bait. They’re often deployed in locations after an attack in the hopes of catching the perpetrating shark that attacked a human or at least reducing the numbers of big sharks in the area. However, like shark nets, drum lines have been heavily criticised as being ineffective, cruel, unethical, non-scientific, and environmentally destructive. One analogy I saw was if a tradie murdered one person and then disappeared, would killing five other Australian tradies at random make Australia safer?

So, finishing up, every time you decide to take a dip in the ocean you’re obviously at risk of a shark attack. True. But you’re much more likely to die from things like kangaroos and horses in car accidents than you are from a shark. So, just be safe, be smart, and if you want to bring your risk to 0%, stay out of the water. Simple as that.

Anyway, guys thank you so much. It’s always a pleasure when you guys join me and listen to these episodes. I know that they’re helping a lot of people. You get back to me, you send me emails, you send me comments on Instagram, on Facebook, and it means a lot to me, guys, and I’ll want to give you a big, big, big thank you from both me and Kel to everyone who gave us their well-wishes and congratulations after the wedding. That really meant a lot to both of us. So, thank you so much, guys, and we were so happy to be able to share that experience with you as well on Instagram and on YouTube.

So, that’s it for this week guys. I hope you enjoy the episode. I hope to see you in the Aussie English Classroom and I will chat to you very soon. See you, guys.

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AE 502 – Expression: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

By pete — 1 month ago

Learn Australian English in this expression episode of The Aussie English Podcast where I teach you to use PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS.

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AE 502 – Expression: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

The National Museum has acquired a rare 1813 ‘holey’ dollar, the first currency minted in Australia.

The coin dates back to early New South Wales when the colony faced a currency shortage.

Governor Macquarie imported 40,000 Spanish dollars and cut their centres out creating 80,000 distinctive coins known as ‘holey’ dollars and dumps.

They circulated only until around 1822, and by 1822, they started to get recalled, and by 1829, they were taken out of circulation completely, and most of them of course, because they were made of silver, were melted down and reused for other purposes or sent back to England as bullion. So, there’s not that many actually survived.

The museum paid $130,000 for the coin. It’ll go on display next year next to Governor Macquarie’s desk and sword in the museum’s Landmark Gallery.

****

G’day, guys. What is going on?

I have just popped back from the gym and I am wrecked, I am stuffed, I am buggered. Oh, I did legs day today. So, I’ve been trying to get back to the gym, hit the gym, you know, three or four times a week. Kel’s been coming as well and trying to learn how to swim.

So, there’s a gym up the road that has, like, basketball courts, a swimming pool, and a weights area to do workouts. And so, I usually go to the weights area and try and, you know, run for a little bit, do some free weights, do some weights on the machines, work out, and Kel tries to come up a few times a week and learn to swim, ’cause she can’t swim.

So, obviously, in Australia, that’s a very important thing for us. It’s a very big cultural thing where we learn to swim usually from day one, right, as kids, as soon as you’re born we… like, for example, my niece is getting swimming lessons and she’s not even a year old yet.

So, yeah, that’s been really fun, but I am buggered, I’m wrecked. I got back, did legs, it was legs day, and I’m very tired after doing some squats, deadlifts, and a bunch of other exercises on the machines. Anyway.

That was a bit of an intro, you mob. Welcome to today’s episode. That intro scene was about the ‘holey dollar’, which was something I’d never known about. I actually learned about this only when I started learning about convicts and early Australia thanks to Aussie English. So, there you go.

That was a story from ABC News the YouTube channel is ABC News on YouTube, obviously. Check it out. It is a great resource if you want to practice the Australian accent.

Guys, remember that if you would like access to all the transcripts and MP3s for the podcast episodes, go to theAussieEnglishPodcast.com, go to ‘sign up’ in the menu there at the top left-hand corner, sign up, and for the price of one coffee per month you will get all the downloads that come with the podcast.

And also, the Podcast is brought to you by the Aussie English Classroom. So, this is where I have all of my courses full of lessons with video lessons, with quizzes, exercises, and it’s designed to get you from intermediate to advanced, and beyond in your English. So, make sure that you go to theAussieEnglishClassroom.com, sign up, give it a go. It is a dollar for your first month, guys. You’ve got nothing to lose and you can cancel at any time. Anyway.

All of that blah, blah, blah aside, welcome to today’s episode. The expression is ‘put your money where your mouth is’, but before we get into that, let’s do the Aussie joke.

So, the Aussie joke is:.

Why didn’t the 50-cent piece roll down the hill with the 20-cent piece?

Okay? So, why didn’t the 50-cent piece… that coin that is octagonal, I think. It’s got eight different edges on it. Octagonal. Why didn’t the 50-cent piece roll down the hill with the 20-cent piece? Here’s the answer. Here’s the answer.

Because it had more ‘cents’. It had more ‘cents’. Get it? So, we can use ‘cents/sense’ two ways there.

‘A cent’ is one hundredth of a dollar, right. So, fifty cents or twenty cents, right. That is half a dollar, fifty cents, or twenty cents, a fifth of a dollar.

So, we can also use the word ‘sense’, though, if you’ve got some sense, or you’ve got a lot of sense, to mean that you are very clever. Okay? That you are practical and you avoid stupid things, right. You’ve got a lot of sense. Okay. So, that’s the pun there.

Anyway, today’s expression, guys, ‘put your money where your mouth is’. This is from Lima. She suggested this in the Aussie English Classroom Facebook group. Good job, Lima. This is a really good one and she has been vying for the expression… well, to have the winning expression for quite a while now, and she finally got it. Good job Lima.

So, let’s go through and define the different words in this expression. It’s quite a long one, ‘put your money where your mouth is’.

So, ‘to put something somewhere’, you know, put your something where your something is. If you put something somewhere, you place it somewhere, right. Maybe you’re holding something and you put it down, or you put it on something, right? You put it, you place that thing.

‘Where’. I think you guys are going to know what the word ‘where’ means. ‘Where’ is in a location, right. Put your money ‘where’ your mouth is. In this case ‘where’ is referring to the location of your mouth. Okay?

‘Money’. Now, ‘money’ is currency, cash, coins, banknotes. The thing that you used to pay for things, right, to buy stuff. You buy stuff with money. Okay? ‘Money’.

And the very last one, ‘mouth’. ‘Mouth’. I am sure you know what ‘a mouth’ is. I am currently with my mouth. I put food in my mouth when I eat. My teeth in my mouth, my tongue is in my mouth, my gums are in my mouth, my lips are round my mouth. You know what ‘mouth’ is.

So, the expression ‘put your money where your mouth is’, what does it mean? I hope you’ve heard this one before. It’s a good one. It’s a good one.

So, literally, you could say, ‘put your money where your mouth is’, if you’re asking someone to back up what they’ve said with money, right, with cash. So, they’ve said something and you’re challenging them to place a wager on what they’ve said, right, to bet money on what they’ve said being true. So, ‘put your money where your mouth is’.

But, figuratively, it can mean to take action to support your statements or opinions, right. So, the same sort of thing you’re challenging someone to do something or to show that something is true, what they’ve said is an opinion or a statement is true, but they don’t necessarily have to put money down on it, right. They don’t have to wager anything. They don’t have to bet anything.

And also, to show that your actions are not just your words, right. It’s kind of like that expression ‘walk the walk as well as talk the talk’, right? So, you… ‘walk the walk’ is like actually do the physical thing that you had said ‘talking the talk’, right? You always talk the talk, but never walk the walk.

So, usually, this kind of expression is used when you’re challenging someone to prove what they’re saying is true, right. If they’re boasting about something or saying something that you think, mmmm, I don’t reckon that’s true, you might say to them, ‘put your money where your mouth is’.

So, let’s go through some examples of how I would use this in day to day life, okay.

Example number one. Imagine that you are having a bit of a yarn with your mate, right. You(‘ve) got a few blokes over at your house, you’re having a barbie, chilling out, you are having a beer, you’re relaxing, it’s a party, and for one reason or another you’re chatting to this guy who turns it into a competition and starts boasting about his achievements or his abilities, right. So, he’s trying to outdo you, he’s trying to say he’s better than you by saying he can do certain things you can’t. You know, maybe he says, I can do a backflip, you know, or I can do a handstand for 10 minutes. And you might say, if you don’t believe him, well, why don’t you put your money where your mouth is? You know, I bet you fifty dollars you can’t do a backflip right here, right now. I bet you fifty bucks that you can’t do a handstand for ten minutes. You know, put your money where your mouth is, walk the walk, don’t just talk the talk, show me that you can do this. I’m… I want you to prove it, okay. Don’t just boast. So, that’s the literal example, right. You’re asking someone to bet money.

Example number two. Imagine you are a girl and you’re out with the girls one night at a nightclub, you know, you’re having a girls’ night out. You’re a single woman, you know, you’re available. You are looking for some kind of man to get to know and hopefully have a relationship with. So, you’re looking for a hunk. That’s a word we use for like an attractive man, you know, and men don’t tend to use that word. Women use that word to define or talk about other men, right. I would never call another man ‘a hunk’ unless I was gay and was attracted to that man, the same way I wouldn’t call another man ‘beautiful’, right. It’s gendered language. Women call men ‘hunks’, and men call women ‘beautiful’, but they don’t use those words on the opposite sexes. So, you’re chilling out with your girls, your mates, your girlfriends, in a booth in a nightclub and you having a few drinks, and this drop-dead gorgeous man walks in, you know, this hunk of a man walks into the club, up to the bar, and he orders a drink. One of the girls might say to you, if I wanted, I bet I could get him to buy me a drink, to which you might reply. well, why don’t you put your money where your mouth is? Go and do it. You know, prove it. Take some action to support your statement or your opinion that you could get this guy to buy you a drink. Go and actually do that right now. Put your money where your mouth is. You know, show us all that you’re right. You’re talking the talk, but we want you to walk the walk.

Example number three. Imagine you’ve got a company that’s always talking about how it puts the environment first and cares about being green and fighting climate change, you know, it’s trying to reduce emissions or it’s donating money to reforest land. However, you find out it’s actually polluting the land a whole lot. It’s not donating anything to fight climate change, and thus, by its actions, doesn’t seem to care about what it says it does. So, you could say, this company never puts its money where its mouth is. The company talks the talk, but never walks the walk. It never puts its money where its mouth is, right. It doesn’t donate this money. It doesn’t do what it says it does.

So, hopefully now, guys, you understand the expression ‘to put your money where your mouth is’. You know, (it) could be used literally to say back up your words with money, you know, place a wager on what you said as true. But it could mean figuratively, take some sort of action to support what you’ve said is true, right, to support your opinion, to support your statement that you’ve just made.

So, as usual, let’s go through a little listen and repeat exercise, guys, where you can practice your pronunciation. I’m going to say a few phrases and I want you to listen and then repeat after me. Okay? Let’s go.

To
To put
To put your
To put your money
To put your money where
To put your money where your
To put your money where your mouth
To put your money where your month is x 5

Good job. Now I’m going to do this in the present continuous tense, okay? We’ll conjugate it and will use the different pronoun so that you can practice these conjugations. Let’s go.

I’m putting my money where my mouth is
You’re putting your money where your mouth is
He’s putting his money where his mouth is
She’s putting her money where her mouth is
We’re putting our money where our mouths are
They’re putting their money where their mouths are
It’s putting its money where its mouth is

Good job, guys! Don’t forget if you would like to go through these different pronunciation exercises with a fine tooth comb and learn a lot more about English pronunciation, connected speech, intonation, all that good stuff, make sure that you sign up at theAussieEnglishClassroom.com, as today I will have a long video explaining all the different little bits and pieces that are going on here when I speak quickly and fluidly that make me sound a lot more natural. Okay. So, you can sign up and you’ll get access to the video for this episode, the other videos for this this course as well for this episode, and all the other content, all the other past courses as well.

So, Aussie English fact wise. I was thinking, how can I tie in the Aussie English fact today with money, right, because obviously ‘put your money where your mouth is’, that’s the most obvious theme for this expression. So, this is what have me think about the ‘holey dollar’, that ‘holey dollar’, the dollar with a hole in it, from early Australian history. So, I thought about doing a little bit of a fact on currency, money, in early Australian history. Okay? So, let’s go.

When colonists first arrived in Australia establishing a stable and acceptable currency was obviously far from the top of the important to do list of the colonists here.

The First Fleet arrived on Australian shores with only the currency it had onboard the ships, which included about 300 pounds of English coinage. And I don’t know if that’s pounds as in a pound of, you know, unit currency from England, or pound as in weight, which is… what, 2.2 pounds is a kilogram. So, I don’t know which one of those it is.

This money was held by Captain Phillip, and the only other money that was there on the ship and that made it to the colony was a bunch of other foreign currencies that had been brought over in the pockets and purses of officers, sailors, and passengers, a.k.a. convicts or British slaves. So, these other currencies included English guineas, shillings, and pence, Dutch guilders, Indian rupees, that was surprising, and Spanish reales.

So, the fact that numerous different currencies were being used simultaneously was really confusing for early colonists. The value of these currencies often related to their metal content, but arguments, disputes, and disagreements often arose, often took place, when people didn’t agree on the value of these different currencies.

The other issue with currency was the fact that there was a lack of these coins and they were often taken out of the colony by trading ships, ships that came to the colony and then left after selling stuff. And this is where promissory notes came into play.

Promissory notes were signed documents with a written promise that a person would owe the holder of that promissory note a certain amount of money. So, effectively, an I Owe You (‘IOU’), right, I owe you some money. We often call those IOU’s.

So, colonists tried paying trade ships with these notes that promise traders would be able to exchange this for cash payment when they arrived in England. However, as you would imagine, many traders often refused and wanted cash in exchange for the goods that they were selling on their journey.

So, promissory notes were an unreliable way to trade and could be easily forged as well. People could make fake promissory notes, right. I mean, you could have just fake someone’s signature. People often argued about their value, and some used them to pay for goods even though they knew that they could never actually get the money in the future to cover those promissory notes.

And there was even one story of a baker who would take his promissory notes, he’d put them in the oven, heat them up, in order to make them more brittle and likely to fall apart so that the person who received this note would, you know, lose it, it would fall apart, and they could never reclaim what they were owed.

Rum was also used as a currency beginning in 1790. So, rum, as in the liquor, right? Johnny Depp drinks rum on Pirates of the Caribbean. You know, ‘Yar! I’m a pirate and I drink a lot of rum’.

So, it was brought to the colony and controlled by a small group of people who became exorbitantly rich as a result. The issue with rum as a currency was that, as you can imagine, many workers who were paid in rum actually drank it instead of using it to buy goods and services that they needed.

So, the rum trade grew and grew to the point that it became the most popular form of currency in the colony to the point where major building constructions, including the Sydney hospital, were even paid for with rum alone. Only with rum, right. Imagine that! Building a house and only using some kind of liquor or even beer to pay for that house. That’s a lot of slabs, guys. That’d be thousands and thousands of slabs. I can’t imagine that. Remember, ‘a slab’ is 24 beers.

So, the practice of using rum as a currency was prohibited by Governor Blight in 1806 and this decision culminated in the overthrow of the government in the Rum Rebellion. That’s a really interesting story that I might have to leave for another day.

To overcome the shortage of coins, Governor Macquarie, obviously the next governor, came up with an ingenious idea to use 10,000 pounds of Spanish dollars sent by the British government to produce a more stable currency. So, Spanish dollar coins had a hole punched through the middle of them creating two coins, the larger ring-shaped coin or ‘holey dollar’, because it has a hole in it, and the smaller punched-out middle of the coin called ‘a dump’, because it’s obviously being dumped out of the hole, right, in the other coin. Doing so turned 40,000 Spanish coins into 80,000 Australian coins making these coins the first currency to be minted in Australia.

These coins entered circulation in 1814 and they began to be taken out of circulation only eight years later in 1822 and onwards when the government began to replace them with sterling coinage instead. By the year 1829, these coins were completely gone from circulation, and because they contained a large amount of silver, quite often they were melted down and used for other purposes or sent back to Britain as silver bullion, and this makes them incredibly hard to find today and also incredibly valuable. And I actually looked to see if I could buy one of these online and I found one for auction that was $459,000. That is the price of a small house. Mind blowing.

Anyway, guys, it’s been a long episode. I hope you found that interesting. I definitely did when I was researching this episode. I won’t keep you any longer. I hope to chat to you soon and I hope that you have an amazing weekend. See ya, guys.

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AE 499 – Expression: — Up a Storm

By pete — 2 months ago

Learn Australian English in this expression episode of The Aussie English Podcast where I teach you how to use — Up a Storm like a native speaker.

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AE 499 – Expression: — Up a Storm

We’ve been talking a bit this week about the 40th anniversary of Cyclone Tracy, the devastating cyclone in Darwin, and a caller mentioned, (it) might have been Annette, talking about the sound that was captured by a bishop at that time, Bishop Ted Collins, and the noise. We’ve managed to track it down. Here’s a bit of that noise that ripped through Darwin close to Christmas in 1974.

****

G’day, you mob! Welcome to this episode of Aussie English, the number one podcast for anyone and everyone who wants to learn advanced English, obviously, too with a tiny little hint of Australian English in there as well, although, it may not be that tiny at times. Depends. Depends.

Anyway, so, the intro scene there, guys, the intro scene was from a radio segment from 2GB Sydney that was aired in 2014. You can probably check out 2GB if you’re in the Sydney area and it was on the YouTube channel Des Poeling-Oer. (I’m) not sure how to pronounce his name, but there will be a link in the transcript if you would like to check out that entire video, although, it was a short one.

But yeah, that was about Cyclone Tracy, which took place in northern Australia, in the Northern Territory, back in the 70s. But we’ll get into that in today’s fact.

Anyway, guys, this is the Aussie English Podcast. This is where I try to help English learners who’ve come to Australia, but elsewhere in the world as well, learn advanced English. So, I’m interested in trying to help you sound more like a native speaker when you learn English, when you’re speaking English, ok? So, that’s the whole point of these episodes. So, obviously you’re listening to the Aussie English Podcast, if you would like to get access to the transcripts and the MP3s unlimited access so that you can download these, make sure you go to TheAussieEnglishPodcast.com and you can sign up there for the price of a coffee per month and you’ll be able to download these anytime, anywhere and practice wherever you want.

Also, the Podcast is brought to you by the Aussie English Classroom, guys. Now, this is where I put all the other content the courses, the videos, the other bonus MP3s, the exercises, the quizzes, everything else that I create I put into the Aussie English Classroom in the form of a course. Except there are many, many, many, courses. So, each week for these expression episodes I create three videos at the moment for pronunciation, for expressions and for vocab and then I guide you through 10 or so different pieces of vocab expressions etc. and I try and help you expand your English so, if you want to join up there, you will get access to this episode’s bonus content as well as previous episodes. You’ll also get access to the interview course that I have in there with other Australians and the pronunciation course so, that you can work on your English pronunciation. Just go to TheAussieEnglishClassroom.com, don’t get it confused with the podcast website of TheAussieEnglishClassroom.com hit sign up, you can enroll and it’s just one dollar for your first month so, give that a go! Anyway, guys, let’s get into today’s joke.

So, today’s expression is obviously about the weather, it’s about storms. So, I thought I’d try and find a joke that is related to the weather. So, here’s the joke: what does a cloud wear under its raincoat? What does a cloud wear under its rain coat? Are you ready? Thunderwear. Thunderwear. I told Kel this one earlier today and she was very underwhelmed with the joke. She was like… *claps*.

What does a cloud wear under its raincoat? Thunderwear. So, it’s a pun on the word ‘underwear’ and the word ‘thunder’, right? From a cloud, thunder that comes from a storm cloud. Anyway, dumb jokes aside, let’s get into today’s expression, guys.

Today’s expression is to ‘verb’ Something, ‘verb’, ‘verb’, ‘verb’ + up a storm, right? So, up a storm, but there’s often a verb before the expression ‘up a storm’, ok? We’ll get into that in a sec. This one was from Zinnia who suggested this in the Aussie English Classroom, a Facebook group we all voted. Good job Zinnia, she won!

So, ‘up a storm’ it’s an interesting expression, because this expression, the first part of it can change. So, you might hear this as to cook up a storm, to dance up a storm, to work up a storm, to kick up a storm, to stir up a storm. The verb at the start there can change, ok? But before we get into how it is defined, let’s talk about the words in this expression.

So, obviously, the first word can be a verb of some kind that can change and the definition of that verb is going to depend on the verb.

But the word ‘up’, the word ‘up’ here isn’t literally talking about the direction upwards, right? So, like, above you, in that direction, the opposite of down or downwards. In this case, the word up is a preposition and it’s part of a phrasal verb. To cook up, to dance up, to work up, to kick up. And in this case, it means to something into a desired or proper condition, right? So, if you cook something up, you are changing something so, that it is cooked. You are completely cooking that thing so, that is how ‘up’ is working here, when it’s combined with a verb, it’s kind of like to completion or into a desired state or proper condition.

The other word in here ‘a storm’, right? ‘Storm’ is a violent disturbance of the atmosphere, with strong winds, usually rain, thunder, lightning, and snow, but no thunderwear, right? So, often you know, there’s storms. There was a storm here last night with a lot of rain that came, though, and there was a lot of wind. Fortunately, though, there was no lightning or thunder and there’s never been any snow, not at least here, not at least here.

So, the definition of the expression, right? ‘— up a storm’, but with a verb before it. So, as I said, it’s interesting because it can change, you could say Cook up a storm, dance up a storm, work up a storm, kick up a storm, but the most common one here I’ll ever hear is ‘cook up a storm’. I think this tends to be the most common one that you’ll hear and it may seem confusing, right. It’s effectively acting like an adverb though, up a storm, right? You’re adding it to have before it it’s modifying the verb. And so, ‘— up a storm’ is added to mean the action of the verb, to a great amount, with fury, with intensity. So, you’re doing something, the verb, you’re doing that verb with enthusiastic spirit, to great amounts.

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If you’re cooking up a storm, you are cooking something up a lot in a furious manner. If you are working up a storm, you’re working something up to a great degree, in an enthusiastic spirit, ok? But it can kind of change the meaning depending on the verb you use. You cook up a storm, you can imagine you are cooking a large amount of food all at once, you’re preparing a great deal of food. If you talk up a storm, you are talking to a great extent. You are talking to a great amount, with a lot of intensity. If you kick up a storm, in this case, if you kick something up, it’s more that you’re creating a situation in which people are very angry or upset or critical so, you’re like causing a fuss, ok?

So, let’s go through three examples using three different versions of this expression. So, this is how I would use these in day to day life, ok? So, the three examples will be for cook up a storm, talk up a storm and kick up a storm.

So, number one: cook up a storm: and this is a true story. So, Kel and I are getting married in the next month and my mum is very keen to have a really big family party of some kind, to have all my family and friends over, my extended family and grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, third cousins. She wants all of those people over at the house to introduce Kel to them, to the entire family. So, she’s invited them all over to our place in Ocean Grove for a Brazilian style barbecue, because Kel is Brazilian, they want to cook up some Brazilian food. So, they’ve decided to theme it with a Brazilian theme and they’re going to cook up a bunch of Brazilian foods from recipes that they get online. So, hopefully that means lots of farofa, feijão, and churrasco. So, that is like… Farofa is this kind of cassava flour powder that you add to food and it’s really tasty. Feijão is beans, black beans, and churrasco is just barbecued meat. So, hopefully will have lots of that. So, because they are planning to cook up a lot of food and for so many people at the party I’m sure on the day they’ll be cooking up a storm, right? They’ll be cooking up a storm in the kitchen, they’ll be cooking loads of food up, they’ll be doing it with intensity, with fury, with enthusiastic spirit. I hope that while they’re preparing this food, they’re going to be cooking up a storm.

Number two: to talk up a storm. To talk up a storm. My sister got pregnant last year, ok? She had a bun in the oven. She was up the duff. She was pregnant and nine months later, obviously, she had a baby. This was in November last year and her daughter is named Isabell. So, my niece is now almost a year old. She is beginning to walk, she can say a few words, you know, things like ‘mama’, ‘dada’, but I’m sure that in no time at all she’s going to be able to talk up a storm, right? She’s going to be able to learn to speak. She’ll start talking everyone’s heads off, she’ll start saying all these other words and so, she’ll be talking, she’ll be speaking non-stop, all the time, enthusiastically, to a great extent, she’ll be talking up a storm.

And, example number three: to kick up a storm. So, in this case, imagine you are going into the city one day for a bit of retail therapy, and retail therapy is something that women quite often use. They use this expression retail therapy to refer to buying clothes or buying things when they’re upset or they’re in a bad mood or they’re sad, right? So, imagine you’re a girl, you’ve broken up with your boyfriend, you’re feeling really bad after the breakup, you want to cheer yourself up, you might go out and have a bit of retail therapy, right? Because you going to buy some stuff in retail. So, if when you go out to get some clothes, some food, some whatever it is that you want to buy for your house or for yourself, you go into the city and there’s a massive protest going on in the street. Thousands of people holding up signs, holding up placards, shouting slogans, are making a lot of noise, and you might want to know what all the fuss is about. You might want to know why they’re kicking up such a storm. So, what’s all the fuss about? Why are they protesting? Why are they kicking up a storm? So, if you find out it’s a relatively trivial matter. Maybe, you know, they want a 1% increase in the wages of teachers. And you think that’s not really important. You might say they’re kicking up a storm over nothing and that these protests are nothing but a storm in a teacup, meaning they’re a very small problem. They’re very trivial, it’s not a big issue, they’re kicking up a fuss over nothing. They’re making a mountain out of a molehill, they’re kicking up a storm over a very trivial matter.

So, hopefully now, guys, you understand the expression ‘Something + up a storm’, right? To cook up a storm, to talk up a storm, to kick up a storm. When we add ‘up a storm’ as an adverb to a verb before it, it means that we’re doing that verb to a great degree, with fury, with intensity, or with enthusiastic spirit, ok? So, as usual, let’s go through a little listen and repeat exercise, guys. So, in this one I use the example to cook up a storm and I want you to listen and repeat after me and practice your English pronunciation, ok? Let’s go!

To cook

To cook up

To cook up a

To cook up a storm x 5

Good job! Now, let’s practice using ‘to kick up a storm’ in the future continuous tense, ok? For example: I will be kicking up a storm. I’ll be kicking up a storm. However, this time, I’m going to use contractions and connected speech as I would when I’m normally speaking English at a natural pace, right? At a natural speed. So, try and pay attention to how these words link together and how the changes in sound occur. And if you want to get access to the exercise, the video where I break this down step by step, don’t forget to join the Aussie English Classroom, remember, it’s just one dollars for your first month at TheAussieEnglishClassroom.com and you’ll get access to this video, in the course, as well as all the previous courses where I break down exactly how I am changing my pronunciation when I’m speaking more naturally, how these connections in words occur, how the contractions occur. Ok? So, let’s go.

Tomorrow, I’ll be kicking up a storm.

Tomorrow, you’ll be kicking up a storm.

Tomorrow, she’ll be kicking up a storm.

Tomorrow, he’ll be kicking up a storm.

Tomorrow, we’ll be kicking up a storm.

Tomorrow, they’ll be kicking up a storm.

Tomorrow, it’ll be kicking up a storm.

Good job there, guys! Good job! You may think why am I using words like tomorrow in these sentences when we use certain tenses like I’ll be kicking, I’ll be doing, I’ll be thinking, because it’s placing it in the future, I think it’s always important to try and give context in the sentence itself so that you attach the tense with a time, ok? So, that’s why I tend to try and use words like tomorrow, yesterday, next year, until tomorrow, etc., to place those verb tenses in context.

Anyway, guys, let’s get into the Aussie English fact for today and then we can finish up and there’s a phrasal verb with up. Alright, so, now I want to talk about Cyclone Tracy.

So, obviously today’s expression was about the word storm or had the word storm in it. So, I thought, you know, what could I do about storms in Australia? And I thought about the severe cyclone storms that Australia gets every year in the monsoon tropics. This is the part of Australia in the north, above the Tropic of Capricorn, right? That goes through, roughly, halfway through Australia and separates the south from the north so, to the north of Australia cyclones hit the coast all the time whether it’s in the Northern Territory or Queensland, they get cyclones each year. Cyclone Tracy was a tropical cyclone though that made landfall on Christmas Eve and Christmas day in 1974 and it devastated the city of Darwin in the Northern Territory in Australia. So, really tragic, because… not just because it was such a devastating storm, but the timing couldn’t have been worse. It arrived on Christmas Eve and it, you know, destroyed Christmas Day as well for all the people there. So, it was the most compact cyclone storm to have ever occurred in the Australian basin and southern hemisphere, with gale force winds extending only 48 kilometres from the centre. So, outside of 48 kilometres from the centre of the storm, the eye of this storm, the gale force winds dropped off which is very weird. That’s a very small, compact, concentrated storm. So, this made it the smallest-ever tropical cyclone worldwide until the year 2000 and I think 7, 2007, 2008, when Tropical Storm Marco broke the record with gale force winds extending only 19 kilometres from the centre, massively compact storm.

So, Cyclone Tracy first started as a storm that formed over the Arafura Sea. And then it moved southwards and affected Darwin with category four winds. The highest sustained winds during this time were up to 205 kilometres an hour with gusts nearly 250 kilometres an hour, right? That’s crazy. I don’t think I’ve ever… I’ve never been in a car that’s driven that fast. That’s insane.

And so, these storms, I guess, they form over the warm water in the tropical areas and then when they hit the land they start to dissipate, but they build up all that energy from the warm water in the oceans. And that happens around the tropics.

So, Cyclone Tracy completely devastated Darwin and it killed 71 people and many thousands of people were injured. In 1974, the cost of the storm was $837 million dollars in damage, which today is more than $6 billion dollars. Initially, after the storm 65 people were killed, were found to have been killed, with six missing and it was only in 2005 when the Northern Territory Coroner proclaimed that the six people that were still missing had perished at sea. So, this cyclone knocked down more than 70 percent of buildings in Darwin, including 80 percent of people’s houses.

And if you search for Cyclone Tracy in Google images you’re going to see the full extent of this cyclone’s destruction. It’s just insane. Everywhere is flat it looks like those photos you see of the U.S. when a massive tornado has gone through a town.

So, 25,000 of the 47,000 inhabitants of the city were made homeless prior to landfall of this cyclone and they were evacuated. Most of Darwin’s population got evacuated to places like Adelaide, Whyalla, Alice Springs, Brisbane, and Sydney and many of these people actually stayed in these cities and never returned after the storm. After the storm had passed and people had assessed all the damage from the storm, the city was eventually rebuilt using more stringent standards to cyclone code so that, hopefully, in the future, the city would be more cyclone-proof and you would prevent any of this sort of destruction to the same extent in the future.

So, that’s the story of Cyclone Tracy, guys. It was a very small and compact storm that hit Australia at a very unfortunate time, during Christmas, in 1974 and it killed 70 people making it the deadliest storm in Australian recorded history, as far as I’m aware.

So, if you come to Australia, I’m sure that if you mention knowing information about Cyclone Tracy the average Australian here is going to have heard of that cyclone and if they were alive during 1974, they may have even been there.

Anyway, guys! Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you have an amazing weekend and I’ll see you in the next episode, episode 500, which I have something very special planned for.

So, I’ll see you then. Bye!

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AE 498 – Expression: Down-to-Earth

By pete — 2 months ago

Learn Australian English in this expression episode of The Aussie English Podcast where I teach you how to use DOWN-TO-EARTH like a native speaker.

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AE 498 – Expression: Down-to-Earth

Australia is a vast and lucky land. Beneath our feet is a treasure trove of unimaginable riches. But this story is about much more than precious minerals and dusty mineshafts. For 150 years, mining has changed the lives of us all in unexpected and extraordinary ways. It sparked waves of mass immigration and ignited political revolt.

****

G’day, you mob! Welcome to this episode of the Aussie English Podcast, the number one podcast for anyone and everyone wanting to learn English so… and the Aussie English Podcast guys is brought to you by the Aussie English Classroom. If you would like to learn English even faster and have access to weekly courses, videos, quizzes, vocab lists, all the extra stuff that will help you get your English to the next level, make sure that you go to theaussieenglishclassroom.com, sign up and it’s just a dollar for your first month. So, get in there and give it a go! You’ve got nothing to lose!

If you’re the kind of person who just wants access to the transcripts and MP3s for the podcast, you can get access to them at theaussieenglishpodcast.com, you can sign up and for the price of one coffee per month you’ll get access to all of the transcripts and MP3s.

Anyway, that aside, today’s intro scene, guys, was the intro to a documentary called Dirty Business: How Mining Made Australia, and this was on the Sterling Documentaries YouTube channel. So, I will put a link into the transcript today so that you can watch that entire documentary on their channel on YouTube if you so choose, it’s pretty interesting. And in today’s Aussie English fact we will go through mining and the history of mining in Australia.

Anyway, guys, as usual, let’s get into an Aussie joke before we go through the expression, the definitions, the examples of how I would use it, the listen and repeat exercise and then the fact, okay?

So, the Aussie joke today guys:

My dog used to chase people on a bike a lot. It got so bad, finally, I had to take his bike away.

So, this isn’t a question and answer joke this time, it’s a story and it’s funny because the first sentence has you thinking there is a dog chasing someone on a bike. A person who is on a bike, but actually it’s the dog who is on the bike chasing people, right? So, that sentence can be actually taken two ways and this is something interesting about English, right?

So, I’ll say the sentence again. My dog used to chase people on a bike a lot. So, he could be chasing people on a bike, as in people riding bikes or it could be that his dog was chasing people whilst the dog was on a bike, right? And then the last line, it got so bad, finally, I had to take his bike away. So, now you’re like, ahhhh, it was the dog’s bike. (I) got it, got it.

So, we have those jokes all the time in English where the first line sounds normal and then the second line shows you that it is not what you thought the first line was, okay?

So, today’s expression is ‘down-to-earth’, to be ‘down-to-earth’. And this was suggested by Lily in the private Facebook group for Aussie English Classroom members. Good job, Lily!

So, as usual guys, let’s go through and define the words in the expression ‘down-to-earth’, ok? ‘Down-to-earth’. I’ll break it up into the individual words.

‘Down’. Obviously, ‘down’ means downwards, right? The opposite of up or upwards, downwards is towards the ground, right? ‘Down’.

‘To’ is towards, in the direction of something.

And, ‘earth’ is the name of the planet, right? The planet Earth. But we often use this to mean the ground or the soil, right? If I’m standing up, usually my feet are on the Earth. If I am digging in the backyard, I might be moving earth around as in the ground or as in soil.

So, what does the expression ‘down-to-earth’ mean? And you’ll often hear this as a compound adjective, as in, someone is ‘down-to-earth’, or Pete is a ‘down-to-earth’ person, right? It could be an adjective in front of a noun as well.

So, if you are down-to-earth or if someone is down-to-earth, it can mean a few different things, although, they’re sort of similar, okay? Practical, reasonable, and friendly, if you’re a down-to-earth person. It could be also that you are practical and directly deal with people so you don’t sort of beat around the bush, right? You’re very straightforward. You’re down-to-earth. But, it can also mean someone who’s very easy to talk to, right? So, they’re not up in the clouds, their head’s not in the clouds, they’re down-to-earth, they’re easy to talk to.

So, let’s go through three examples of how I would use the expression to be ‘down-to-earth’, right? If someone’s ‘down-to-earth’, alright.

Example number one: imagine that you are a foreign student and you have arrived in Australia from somewhere overseas. You’re studying English, you’ve organised your school, you have organised your accommodation, but you need to find a job, right? So, you have asked your friends maybe at the school that you’re learning English at, where can I apply for a job? How do I apply? What do I need to do for my CV, my résumé? And then you get that all sorted, you print out a few copies of your résumé and you head down to a local coffee shop or a cafe where your friends have suggested that you could submit your resume or your CV and apply for a job. So, you do that, you go down there, and you find out the people there are really down-to-earth. So, you get along with them really well, you get along like a house on fire, and they decide that they will give you the job. So, lo and behold, you get the job, you really had a good time with them. They were really down-to-earth, you got hired and the rest is history. The people you talk to were really down-to-earth. They were very easy to talk to, very practical, very reasonable, very friendly.

Example number two: so, you are going to a party where you know that there are going to be loads of rich people, but you’re just an average Joe, right? You’re just an average middle-class, white-collar, or even blue-collar worker. So, you’re worried everyone at the party is going to be really pretentious, really pompous, stuck up and, quite frankly, unpleasant to be around because that’s your opinion. That is the stereotype of rich people, right? So, you show up in your modest car. Maybe it’s a Holden Commodore or Ford Falcon. You get out and you see Ferraris everywhere, Lamborghinis, Mercedes, BMWs, Audis, everywhere around you. The party’s in this huge house, a mansion with butlers, waiters, servants, gardeners running around at the guests’ beck and call the whole time. The grounds of the house are huge, massive lawns, fountains, statues, and you go in. Everything’s really extravagant. Everything is really gourmet food wise and everything is very luxurious. However, when you start chatting to people, you realise that despite these people being loaded, despite them having a lot of money, many of the guests are actually incredibly down-to-earth people. They are really down-to-earth, meaning that you can have great conversations with them. They’re very practical, they’re very direct, they’re very friendly. They just seem like normal down-to-earth people, right? So, the idea here being that you thought that they were going to be stuck up with their heads up in the clouds, you know, on a different level from you, but it turns out they were down-to-earth with their feet firmly placed on the ground, they were very well-grounded.

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Example number three: Imagine you’re a young lady. You’ve gone out on a date with a boy, you’ve hit it off, you’ve done really well, you decide you’re going to be in a relationship, and you want to take him home to meet the family, but you’re worried that your dad he has high expectations and he’s very judgmental when it comes to boys who want to date you, right? For your romantic partners. So, you’re worried about his high standards and how this boy that you’re seeing is going to perform. So, you take him over and when your dad meets your boyfriend, he quickly realises that he is a great kid, he’s a great guy, he’s got a good head on his shoulders, his head isn’t in the clouds. He’s very practical, direct, easy to talk to. Everyone gets along like crazy at dinner and when he leaves your father might talk to you and say, well done, he seems like a great guy. He seems like a very down-to-earth guy. I approve. Your boyfriend is very down-to-earth. He is an awesome guy.

Awesome, guys! well I hope you now understand the expression to be ‘down-to-earth’. This can be to be a practical, reasonable or friendly person. It can be that when you deal with people you do so in a very direct and practical manner and it can also mean that you’re very easy to talk to so, you’re very realistic when you talk to people.

So, as usual, let’s go through the listen and repeat exercise now, guys, where you guys can practice your pronunciation. So, listen and repeat after me, guys. If you’re working on your Aussie English accent, obviously, try and mimic my accent as much as possible as I have a general Australian accent. If you are working on a different accent just go with that, practice that accent. Let’s go!

To be

To be down

To be down to

To be down-to-earth x 5

Good job, guys, good job! So now we’re going to go conjugate through the sentence. ‘I used to be down-to-earth’. ‘You used to be down-to-earth’. So, we’ll be using ‘used to’. And remember, if you ‘used to’ and ‘do something’, ‘be something’, whatever it is, it means that that thing used to happen previously quite a lot in the past, right, but it’s no longer happening. For example, I used to go to high school, I used to like surfing, I used to have a lot of friends, I used to live in Melbourne. It’s something that happened in the past, but no longer happens today, okay? So, let’s go!

I used to be down-to-earth.

You used to be down-to-earth.

He used to be down-to-earth.

She used to be down-to-earth.

We used to be down-to-earth.

They used to be down-to-earth.

It used to be down-to-earth.

Good job, guys! Remember, if you would like to go through this pronunciation exercise in more detail where I take you through step by step all the aspects of pronunciation, I talk about intonation and rhythm, things like that in a video make sure that you go to theaussieenglishclassroom.com. Sign up and you will get access to two days of video for this course that will go with this expression episode, as well as all of the previous courses and you can complete them in your own time, anywhere you like, online in the Classroom.

Anyway, guys, let’s get into the Aussie English fact for today and then we will finish up. Alright, so today’s expression was about Earth as in the ground. Therefore, I was thinking for the Aussie English fact maybe we could talk about mining in Australia, because mining is a relatively big deal in Australia.

So, mining in Australia is a significant primary industry and contributor to the Australian economy. I’m sure if you are here already, you’ve probably seen it on the news as they, the politicians, are always talking about mining.

Numerous different kinds of ores and minerals are mined across the continent and, historically, mining booms have encouraged immigration to Australia.

In the early days of Australia, when the colonies were being developed, mining contributed a significant amount to preventing potential bankruptcy of these early colonies so they were making a lot of money from mining.

Copper and silver were discovered in South Australia around the 1940s, which led to the export of the ore and a great deal of immigration of skilled miners and smelters into Australia.

The first economic minerals in Australia were silver and lead, and that started in 1841 in a mine at Glen Osmund in Adelaide, South Australia. The value of these mines though was soon overshadowed by the discovery of copper at places like Kapunda, Burra, and the Copper Triangle, they are three towns called Moonta, Kadina and Wallaroo. These are all indigenous names, I take it, and this was located at the top of the York Peninsula.

About 10 years later in 1851, gold was found in New South Wales and Victoria and the Australian gold rushes took off. The influx of wealth that the gold brought soon made Victoria Australia’s richest colony by far, and Melbourne, the largest city on the island.

By the middle of the 1850, 40% of the world’s gold was dug out of Australian soils.

Today, mining activity occurs in all states and territories across Australia, but only an estimated 0.02% of Australia’s land surface has directly been impacted by mining. That was actually a lot less than I had expected.

So, major active mines in Australia include the Olympic Dam, in South Australia. This is a copper, silver, and uranium mine believed to have the world’s largest uranium resource. And the Super Pit gold mine, which has replaced a number of underground mines near Kalgoorlie in WA, Western Australia.

So, which minerals and ores has Australia primarily mined? We mine iron ore and we’re the second largest supplier after China, supplying about almost a billion metric tons of iron ore every year, and that is 25% of the world’s output.

We mine nickel, 9% of the world’s output, aluminium that’s almost 30% of the world’s output, number one we are for aluminium. We mine copper, we mine gold, we mine silver, and we mine uranium. Those are the biggest ores and minerals that we mine in Australia. But we also mine diamonds, opals, zinc, coal, oil shale, petroleum, natural gas, silica, and other rare elements as well.

Despite the value of mining in Australia and the revenue that it generates for the Australian Government and obviously the Australian people, many people would like to see an end to mining in Australia, especially, for certain minerals and ores others such as coal, which is a relatively contentious mineral or that is dug up from the ground and burnt in order to create electricity, but it is relatively inefficient and it contributes heavily to climate change. That said, mining is arguably the backbone of the Australian economy and it will likely remain a big part of Australia into the future for better or worse.

So, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode, guys. I hope you have a great weekend and I’ll chat to you soon.

See you later!

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AE 497 – Expression: On Thin Ice

By pete — 2 months ago

Learn Australian English in this expression episode of The Aussie English Podcast where I teach you to use the expression ON THIN ICE like a native.

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AE 497 Expression: On Thin Ice

I came from the other end of the Snowy River down in Victoria on a farm out from Orbost and my father, who had the farm, said, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they could do something about stopping these bloody floods?’.

Every snowmelt the floods would come down and cover the crops and so on.

It was difficult for them.

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G’day, guys! G’day, you mob! How is it going?

Remember, ‘you mob’ is a slang term in Australia for ‘you guys’, right, and it is from, I guess, a mob of kangaroos, a group of kangaroos. So, you mob, I hope you’re going well. I hope you’ve been having a ripper of a week.

So, today’s intro scene was about Australia’s greatest-ever engineering feat, the national heritage listed Snowy Hydro Scheme, and the video at the start there was from the Environment Department’s YouTube channel. So, I will leave a link in the transcript if you guys would like to check that out. I would obviously recommend that as you will get exposure to other people speaking with Australian accents and obviously using all kinds of different vocab and everything in English. So, check that out.

Anyway, I’m pretty wrecked, I’m pretty stuffed, I am exhausted. It’s been a lot of running around this week. We’ve had to organise a whole bunch of stuff regarding marriages. So, Kel and I are getting married soon, and we’re just… We’re not having a big thing, right? We’re not making a big deal of it. We’re not really doing a traditional marriage in a church or even with a lot of people there, to be honest, because Kel’s family’s in Brazil, so we just thought it’s probably easier to just do a small thing here in Australia and really just go and sign the papers. So, at the moment, we’re having to go through and get all of the documents ready, so like my birth certificate, my passport, her birth certificate, her passport, the documents to apply for marriage with witnesses. So, today we had to go to the cop shop, to the police station, and have a justice of the peace sign all of these pieces of paper as we were there signing them as well. So, that’s been a bit of a headache, and before that we tried to have our friends witness it, but they screwed it up, they stuffed it up, and signed as the people getting married and not as the witnesses. So, we had to go through it again. Anyway.

Welcome to this episode of Aussie English, guys. We’re getting close to episode 500. So, this is probably going to be the second last expression episode before we hit 500, and something special is going to happen once we get to 500, so stay tuned for that. Anyway.

Aussie English, the Aussie English podcast. Welcome. If you’ve been listening for a long time, it’s good to have you here again. If it’s your first time, welcome, thanks for joining me.

This podcast is brought to you by The Aussie English classroom. So, you can go to TheAussieEnglishClassroom.com, and this is the online learning environment that I put content in for these expression episodes, and I create courses that go with each of these expression episodes, and I have other courses in there too on pronunciation. I also have interviews in there that I’ve broken down with other Australians. So, it is a one-stop shop. If you are trying to get your English from intermediate to advanced, it is a great place to get started.

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Welcome to this episode today, guys. This one is ‘on thin ice’. It’s a really good expression. I use this quite a lot, and to be honest, my father used to use this on me quite a lot as a little rambunctious and mischievous teen as I was growing up, but we’ll get into that shortly.

Firstly, let’s get into the Aussie joke, and this one is a good one today, because it involves Batman, right. Dunununah dunununah Batman!’. Batman. Alright. So, the joke is:

What’s man’s favourite food? What is that man’s favourite food?

Are you ready for this? Are you ready?

‘Just-ice’. ‘Just-ice’.

Do you get it? Oh my gosh… So, what’s that man’s favourite food? ‘Just-ice’ as in, ‘justice’, right? If you separate the word ‘justice’ into ‘just-ice’, it’s like saying ‘only ice’, he just likes eating ice, he is only interested in ice, but it’s funny because Batman is obviously a superhero who is interested in justice, justice. ‘Just-ice’, ‘justice’. Badoomsh! Alright.

So, today’s expression is ‘on thin ice’, right, ‘to be on thin ice’. This was suggested by me this week in the Aussie English Classroom Facebook group. So, that’s four members of the Aussie English Classroom. This week we all suggested expressions. I put this one in, I threw this in as my suggestion, and it got voted on and I won. Go me!

So, let’s go through the definitions of the words in the expression ‘on thin ice’, right. I’ll skip ‘to be’. You know what ‘to be’ is.

‘On’. If you’re on something, you’re physically in contact with and supported by something. So, you’re on the surface of something, usually, right? I might put my coffee here that I’ve got on a coaster, the thing that protects the table. I put the coaster on the table, I put my coffee on the table, and then after I finish the coffee, I might put it on the bench next to the sink. Okay? ‘On’.

‘Thin’. ‘Thin’. Something that is ‘thin’ is… it has the opposite surfaces or sides of it very close together. Right? So, a piece of paper is incredibly thin, because each side of the piece of paper is very close together, right. It’s very, very thin. You can use this for describing something like a piece of paper or maybe a stamp or a book. You know, you could have a thin book with very few pages or you could have a thick book with a lot of pages. But you can also describe someone as being ‘thin’ when you want to say that they are not fat. Right? So, like a piece of paper, both sides of the person are very close together. They are thin.

The last word here, guys. ‘Ice’. ‘Ice’ is frozen water, a brittle transparent crystalline solid, right. The crystal when water freezes, when it goes below 0 degrees Celsius, it becomes ice.

So, let’s go through and define the expression ‘to be on thin ice’, and I wonder if you guys have heard this before. I wonder if anyone has said to you are on thin ice. Be careful you’re on thin ice.

So, if we imagine this literally, if you were literally standing on thin ice, what do you think the message there is, right? It’s that you’re resting on ice that is thin and it’s likely to crack and break, so you’re in a precarious and risky situation. So, literally, if you’re on thin ice, you are standing on ice that is thin, it is liable to crack or break, and you’re likely to fall into the cold water below.

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Figuratively, it is that you are in a precarious or risky situation. So, you might not literally be on ice, but you might be in a dangerous situation, so you are on thin ice, right.

But this one is also often used to mean that you’re already in trouble and that you can’t afford to make another mistake. Right? So, my dad would say this to me when I was a kid and I had already misbehaved, I had already done something wrong, maybe I’d done a few things wrong, and I was at the point of pushing him over the edge. I was at his breaking point. If I had done one more thing, something bad would have happened, like maybe he would ground me or he would give me some kind of penalty or punishment, right? So, he might say to me, ‘Look, you’re on thin ice. No more. No more misbehaviour, Pete’. You’re on thin ice.

So, where does this expression originate from? This idiom is one that originated from Holland or the Netherlands. We also call Holland the Netherlands in English. So, skating, you know skating on ice, was popular there and that’s where it came from originally, skating on ice, on those blades on the bottom of your shoes on ice in winter, and the phrase that you were ‘on thin ice’ was commonly used especially when seas, rivers, streams, etc., would freeze during winter, and then people would skate over them. So, it would be like a warning. Right? You’re on thin ice. Be careful. Don’t, you know, jump up and do any pirouettes or something.

So, anyway, let’s go through the examples of how I would use the expression ‘to be on thin ice’ like a native speaker in my day to day life, right? Okay.

Example number one and this is the literal example. You’ve travelled up to one of the snowfields in the Australian Alps in Australia. So, imagine Thredbo or Mount Buller or Mount Hotham. You’re out snowboarding or skiing one day and you end up off the track, falling down the side of a mountain, a cliff, or ravine, or something, and landing on a frozen lake. You might get knocked out during this fall, you know, you get KOed, you’re… you go black, you’re not conscious, but when you come to, when you wake up, you hear you made shouting out to you from a distance saying, ‘Be careful! Don’t move suddenly or abruptly. You’re on thin ice!’. So, you’re literally on some ice that is thin. Be careful where you put your weight, because if you aren’t careful it might break and you might fall into the water.

Example number two, and I pretty much went over this earlier on. I used to get in trouble with my father all the time as a kid or a teenager. I’d push his buttons. I would push the limits. I would… you know, maybe I would swear or maybe I, you know, did something I wasn’t allowed to do, I misbehaved, I didn’t come home on time, I missed my curfew. If I was already in trouble, I’d misbehave several times before, as I said, my dad might say to me, ‘You’re on thin ice! So, if you make another mistake, you’re in for it. You’re going to be in trouble. You’ll be in real trouble and there’s no turning back. You’ll be grounded. I won’t give you your pocket money. You’ll be punished in some other way. You’re on thin ice.’. Right? It’s kind of like you’re on your final warning. So, don’t misbehave, don’t muck up, don’t do anything wrong.

Example number three. Imagine you’ve just got a promotion at work, but it comes with a probation period. So, probation period, as in, you have to be evaluated after three months, for example, the probation period is three months long, and after three months, they will tell you how you’ve done and if you’ve done well, you’ll get to keep the job. So, imagine, though, while you’re going through this probation period for three months you screw up a few things, you make a few mistakes, you don’t do your job ideally, but only just manage to scrape by. So, your employers or your boss might tell you, ‘Look, you’re doing okay, but you need to shape up, you need to do better, because you’re on thin ice. If you make any more mistakes, we might have to not give you this promotion, we might have to demote you’, right? So, you’re in a risky situation. You need to pay attention and shape up in order to maintain this position. You’re on thin ice.

So, hopefully now, guys, you understand the expression ‘to be on thin ice’. Obviously, literally, this would be to be on ice that is thin, that is likely to break or crack. So, you are in a precarious or risky situation.

Figuratively, this can mean that you are in a dangerous situation that isn’t necessarily related to ice breaking at all.

And lastly, it can mean that you’re in trouble, you’re already in trouble and you can’t afford to make another mistake, and you’re on your final warning. Okay? You’re on thin ice.

So, as usual, guys, let’s go through a little listen and repeat exercise here where you guys can practice your pronunciation. Okay? So, listen and repeat after me. Let’s go.

To be

To be on

To be on thin

To be on thin ice x 5

Good job! Focus on linking those words. There’s a few things going on there. You will see though, if you join up to the Aussie English Classroom, when I break this down in the 10-minute video that I do each week for the pronunciation exercises, you will see the sort of little tidbits, the little important bits of information, about connected speech there, okay? To be on thin ice. Hopefully, that makes sense.

So, let’s go through and conjugate this just in the present tense, guys. Okay, so ‘I am’, ‘You are’, etc., but we’ll contract ‘am’, ‘are’, and ‘is’ on to the previous pronouns. Okay? So, let’s go.

I’m on thin ice

You’re on thin ice

She’s on thin ice

He’s on thin ice

We’re on thin ice

They’re on thin ice

It’s on thin ice

Good job! Good job! And I hope you paid attention to how those words are linking together, the connected speech there, okay? Anyway.

Let’s get into the Aussie English fact for today, guys, and then we will finish up, and I will bid you farewell for this week. All right.

So, today’s Aussie fact. It’s all about the Snowy Hydro Scheme. And so, my thought pattern was, okay, the phrase is ‘on thin ice’. What is there in Australia that is ice or snow or the cold that I can talk about? And I thought about the Snowy Mountains, and then I thought about the Snowy Mountain Hydro Scheme. So, I wonder if you guys have heard about this.

So, what is it. The Snowy Hydro Scheme is a hydroelectricity and irrigation complex in south-east Australia. The Scheme consists of 16 major dams, seven power stations, one pumping station, and over 225 kilometres of tunnels, pipelines, and aqueducts that were constructed between the years of 1949 and 1974. So, (it) went for about 25 years.

Astonishingly, only 2% of the construction work is visible above the ground. It was completed on time and in budget in 1974 at a total cost of $820 million dollars, which today, is the equivalent of more than $6 billion dollars. Pretty Penny.

So, this scheme was the largest-ever engineering project undertaken in Australia and was overseen by Chief Engineer, Sir William Hudson. Around two thirds of the workforce employed in the construction of the Snowy Hydro Scheme were recently-arrived immigrant workers desperate for work who originated from over 30 different foreign countries. The total number of workers on the Scheme was more than 100,000 in that 25-year period, and the official death toll reached 121 people. I don’t know if that’s a lot or if that’s not very many. Sounds like a lot.

At the completion of the project, the Australian government maintained much of the diverse workforce and created the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation, SMEC, which remains an international engineering consultancy company up to today.

So, why was the Snowy Hydro Scheme built? You know, why was it put into place?

The Snowy Hydro Scheme was implemented to solve a yearly problem for farmers and inhabitants of south eastern Victoria. So, every year here in the snowfields in the Australian Alps the snow would fall on the Great Dividing Range and it would melt in spring time and summer time obviously, and then flood the low-lying flood plains and river flats in places like East Gippsland in southeast Victoria as the water flowed out into Bass Strait and into the Tasman Sea. Thus, each year, farmers didn’t know if their crops would be ruined by these floods or not.

In order to divert the excess snowmelt water and spare the farmers their yearly headache, the Snowy Hydro scheme was implemented, and this had numerous benefits including channeling the water away from the farmers crops into the Murray and Murrumbidgee River irrigation areas, which allowed farmers to access this water via the irrigation systems, and also, they were able to harness the power of the water and turn into electricity using hydroelectricity. Right?

So, how was this done? The water falls about 800 meters and travels through large hydroelectric power stations, which generate peak-load power for the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, and Victoria.

And in 2016, The Snowy Mountains Hydroelectricity System/Scheme, whatever you want to call it, was added to the Australian National Heritage List.

So, whether you’re into skiing and snowboarding, hiking or camping, or you just want to check out the dams and power plants and other things related to these Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme, the Snowy Mountains in the Australian Alps are definitely a beautiful spot worth checking out if you find yourself in the south east of Australia.

Anyway, guys that’s it for today. I hope you enjoy this episode. I hope you have a lovely week and I’ll see you soon. Catch ya!

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AE 495 – Expression: Dodge a Bullet

By pete — 2 months ago

Learn Australian English in this expression episode of The Aussie English Podcast where I teach you to use to DODGE A BULLET like native speaker.

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AE 495 – Expression: Dodge A Bullet

We all recognise the face, I mean, how could we forget? 15 years after the Port Arthur Massacre that photo of Martin Bryant still sends a shiver down the spine.

Nowadays, we like to think that his eyes are a little crazy and that expression is ever-so-slightly off kilter, but that’s all in hindsight. The fact is, apart from being a bit troubled as a kid and intellectually limited, really Martin Bryant could be anyone’s son, but he just so happens to be Carlene Bryant’s son, and the burden of that has been devastating for her.

Carlene Bryant is tormented by the same questions that trouble us all. What made a seemingly ordinary if dim-witted young man go out and kill 35 people?

****

What is going on, you mob? How’s it going? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English, the number one podcast for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English, although that’s about to change as some of you may know.

If you listen to the recent episode, this podcast is going to have a slight pivot, a slight shift and a slight change in focus to hopefully focus more on just general English. Obviously, guys, though it is going to be from me an Australian English speaker so, I’m going to be using Australian English all the time. The odd slang word, the odd expression, all of that sort of stuff, hopefully still Australian guests and everything on the podcast, but I want to sort of broaden my horizons a little bit and get other folks on the podcast from all over the world, whether they’re English-as-a-second-language speakers or they are native speakers of English from South Africa, America, England or wherever it is. I want to sort of broaden and things out a bit.

So, thank you so much to everyone who sent me an e-mail responding to that last Walking with Pete episode. I think it was 494, a lot of you got back to me and the overall consensus from you, guys, was that it was a good idea to be focusing more on general English. Obviously, you will still get exposure to all kinds of dialects, but primarily Australian English as that’s what I use, as I said, but hopefully we’ll start covering other topics, hopefully things like collocations, I’m really keen to do a course with that and Kel is thinking about helping me with that as well so, that might be the first thing that we tackle and we’re probably going to be putting that into a course in the Aussie English Classroom as well.

So, as usual, this podcast the Aussie English Podcast is brought to you by the Aussie English Classroom. If you would like to learn English from a more sort of in-depth, thorough study kind of perspective, where you get courses every single week and you get courses from all the previous expression episode, sign up at theaussieenglishclassroom.com.

If, however, you aren’t interested in studying courses or maybe you just don’t have enough time to study, but you still like reading the transcripts and you want access to the MP3s as well, go to theaussieenglishpodcast.com and you can sign up there for the price of one coffee a month to be able to get all the transcripts, you’ll get unlimited access to the transcripts for each podcast episode. Anyway, guys. It has been a really good day. It has been a really good day!

A few things happened. And one really, really big thing, but I think I’m going to have to wait and tell you about that in the near future, but it is my one-year anniversary with Kel tomorrow.

So, we went out today, though, and had dinner, that was amazing. We also went out at sunset and took some amazing photos at a lake nearby called Blue Lake, in Ocean Grove, and this is this amazing lake where there are so many different bird species all in the one area. And I’ve been there probably five times in the last week and a half. It is phenomenal.

Anyway, moving on to this episode, guys, the segment at the start there, guys, was from a 60 Minutes report about the Port Arthur massacre and I wanted to talk about this because it’s a big part of Australian history and it has shaped gun laws in Australia and obviously talking about guns is related to today’s expression to ‘dodge a bullet’, but before we get into that, let’s do the Aussie English joke, ok?

And it’s a good one, it’s a ripper of a joke today, guys! A good pun, alright? So, here it is, here’s the joke:

Why do you call a gun that doesn’t kill anyone? What do you call a gun that doesn’t kill anyone?

A ‘vegun’…It’s so stupid! ‘A vegun’.

Get it? right? Cause vegans are people who don’t eat any meat or any animal products, right? I think they avoid milk and honey anything that’s come from animal that they just eat plants, right? So, what do you call a gun that doesn’t kill anyone? A ‘vegun’… Oh my gosh, I need to get some better jokes.

Alright, guys, so today’s expression is to ‘dodge a bullet’, to ‘dodge a bullet’, and this one came from Zinnia in the English classroom. She suggested this in the Facebook group for members of the Aussie English Classroom, we voted on it. Good job, Zinnia! This was a really, really good expression and I have used this quite a lot.

So, let’s go through to find the words in the expression to ‘dodge a bullet’. Obviously, there are only really two words here worth defining.

Dodge. To dodge something. If you dodge something, it is that you move out of the way, right? So, if something is coming towards you, usually something dangerous that’s going to hurt you if it hits you, you know, like a bullet, a rock, maybe it’s a car, maybe it’s a person on a bike. If you shift yourself out of the way quickly, if you move out of the way and you avoid being hit by that thing, you are dodging that thing, you have dodged that thing, you’ve moved out of the way.

A Bullet. A bullet is the ammunition that goes into a gun, right? It could be a hand gun, machine gun, but that is a bullet. There is gun powder in the bullet. There is a metal slug made from lead or tungsten some other kind of metal on the front, but the bullet is the entire thing, ok? A bullet.

Alright, so let’s define the expression, to ‘dodge a bullet’. If you dodge a bullet, it’s that you managed to avoid a difficult or unwelcome situation, you know, like being shot by a bullet. So, it is to avoid a difficult or unwelcome situation. It is also to have a narrow escape, to avoid injury, disaster, or some other situation, ok? So, overall, it is just to avoid something unpleasant, an unpleasant situation.

So, let’s go through some examples of how I would use the expression to ‘dodge a bullet’ in a sort of day-to-day life, right? If I was just using English as I normally do each day, alright?

Example number one. So, imagine you gone into the city to do some shopping. You’ve parked your car on the street in front of the mall or shopping centre where you want to go and do some window shopping, get some new clothes, whatever it is. You’re in a rush and you forget to purchase a parking ticket, though, you know, you need a parking ticket to stay in that spot. Maybe it’s two hours’ worth of parking in this two-hour parking spot and you forget to buy a ticket.

So, you rush inside and the ticket inspector is doing the rounds and eventually comes around and gets to your car and he starts looking at your car and is he is like ‘alright, there’s no ticket here… I better write a ticket to this person or for this person”…

So, as he starts to pull out his note pad, you know, that he is going to write this ticket up on, just in the nick of time, just before anything bad happens, you arrive and see that he is about to do so, and you start to apologise profusely. So, you say to the ticket inspector: I’m really sorry! I didn’t know that I was meant to buy a ticket here! I’m about to leave, anyway. Is there any way that you can find it in your heart to not give me a ticket today? Today is not my day. Please don’t give me a ticket!”, and for some unknown reason he decides to give you a pass. He lets you off the hook, he doesn’t give you a ticket!

So, you feel so lucky because you’ve dodged a bullet and you don’t have to get a ticket. You don’t have to pay the ticket fine that you would get. That could have been hundreds of dollars. You dodged a bullet. And in this case, the bullet was the ticket. You avoided the ticket. You dodged the bullet.

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The thing that it is, Aussie English today, right? With the Aussie English classroom, with all the

Example number two. Imagine you going to a footy match, right? A football match at the MCG, the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the MCG in Melbourne. It’s one of the more famous places around Australia that you will see footy matches if you come here. So, you’re seeing your favourite match play. (It) could be Hawthorn or Essendon, and they’re playing against some other team that you hate, maybe Collingwood. They have to win this match, right? If they win this match, it means they can enter the finals for this year’s shot at winning the footy premiership. So, the game’s neck and neck the whole time, meaning that the scores are very, very close to one another and they keep passing each other, but your opponent’s team is just ahead of you the entire time until right at the end where your team just manages to squeeze forward and at the final siren it gains one point and wins the game, right? 70 to 71, for example. So, your team dodged a bullet when they won this match by one point and they got their chance to enter the finals. They avoided a bad situation, which would have been a losing this match that would have been the bullet, they dodged a bullet.

Example number three, ok? Imagine that you are an overweight person who’s been eating a lot of really bad food, a lot of junk food, right? So, lots of fried food, like fried chips, KFC, Maccas, you know, McDonalds. You haven’t been exercising very much. You haven’t been active. And to top it off, you’ve been working at a desk, you’ve had a very sedentary kind of lifestyle where you’re not moving around, you’re working in a desk 9 to 5 every single day. so, one day you feel some pain in your chest and the pain shoots up into your left shoulder and suddenly you realise you’re having a heart attack, you call 000, which is the police, the fire brigade, and the ambos, the ambulances in Australia and you get the ambulances to come and pick you up and take you to the hospital. So, they arrive, they whisk you off to the hospital and they save your life with the treatment that they give you, but only just, right? They only just save your life. It could have been a hell of a lot worse. You could have died. So, when you wake up in the hospital bed, the doctor might tell you this that this was the case you only just had your life saved. You dodged a major bullet and you need to change your lifestyle and get healthy. The bullet obviously being the, you know, situation where you could have died, the heart attack, the act of dying. You avoided this, you dodged a bullet, so it was a close brush with death. Hopefully you’ll change your ways and, you know, get outside do a bit of exercise, get the blood pumping a bit every day.

So, hopefully now guys you understand the expression to ‘dodge a bullet’. This is to manage to avoid a difficult or unwelcome situation, to have a narrow escape, to avoid injury, disaster or any undesirable situation. So, as usual let’s go through a listen and repeat exercise, guys, where you guys can practice your pronunciation, whether you try to nail the Australian accent, in which case copy me as much as you can or you’re just trying to perfect your English accent whatever English accent that is. Just listen and repeat after me, Let’s go!

To dodge

To dodge a

To dodge a bullet x 5

Good work! Good work! Now we’re going to conjugate through the different pronouns. I, you, he, she, we, they, it and we’re going to do so in the conditional perfect tense, right? ‘Would have’ plus the past participle of a verb, would have done, would have seen, would have thought, ok?

So, pay attention to how these are contracted when I speak naturally. I’m going to fully contract these sentences, guys, so if you would like to learn more about these contractions and the sort of steps to learning how to do this while you speak English, make sure you join the Aussie English Classroom and you’ll get a video today describing the pronunciation of these sentences and these contractions, ok? So, listen and repeat after me, guys, this is fully contracted, how I would say this normally, ok? Let’s go!

I’d’ve dodged a bullet.

You’d’ve dodged a bullet.

He’d’ve dodged a bullet.

She’d’ve dodged a bullet.

We’d’ve dodged a bullet.

They’d’ve dodged a bullet.

It’d’ve dodged a bullet.

That may sound weird, guys, but that is actually how I would say that when speaking really quickly and naturally, right? I’d dodged a bullet, he’d dodged a bullet. That’s how I would speak quickly and to get your head around these will really help you understand native speakers when they speak quickly, but also make you sound a lot more natural when you speak English.

Anyway, guys, let’s get into the Aussie English fact for today which is a bit of a somber fact, it’s a bit macabre, it’s a bit…. It’s a bit sad, but it’s worth knowing, guys, it is important that you guys know more about Australian culture if you’re coming to Australia and yeah that’s why I thought I would talk about this today.

So, today I want to discuss the Port Arthur massacre, guys. This occurred at, obviously, Port Arthur, the Port Arthur Historic Site in Port Arthur, Tasmania, on the 28th and 29th of April in 1996.

So, the Port Arthur Historic Site was a penal settlement that began as a small timber station in 1830 and it is a tourist attraction that you can visit in Tasmania, but tragically it is now well known in Australia for this massacre that happened where one of, if not the largest, mass shootings occurred in Australia. So, 35 people died and 23 were wounded. The murderer was Martin Bryant and he had a subnormal IQ and was intellectually disabled. And he pleaded guilty for the incident and was given 35 life sentences without the possibility of parole.

So, he is currently serving something like over a thousand years in jail in Tasmania. So, this event underpins some fundamental changes of gun control laws in Australia that came into place shortly after this incident.

But what happened? What exactly occurred? Let’s chat a bit about the story.

So, Martin Bryant was this kid who grew up in Tasmania. He, for all intents and purposes, had two normal, loving parents. He was bequeathed about $600,000 in property in assets from this eccentric woman that he became really close friends with. She had apparently, like, 40 cats and 16 or so dogs that he was paid to take care of as a job, but she tragically passed away in a car accident and he gained all of this inheritance.

So, he went on many trips around the world from 1993 onwards and was withdrawing quite a lot of money during this time, obviously, spending it on himself and life experiences, but he also spent this money on some guns including an AR-10 semi-automatic rifle through a newspaper advertisement that he had seen in Tasmania and then later he went on to buy an AR-15. At the time, non-handguns in Tasmania were not required to be registered.

Switching on to his family, though. Bryant’s dad wanted to buy a bed and breakfast called Seascape, but unfortunately a couple called Noelene and David Martin bought the property before his father could organise his finances. Unfortunately, his father fell into a deep depression and ultimately committed suicide. And so, this, coupled with Martin Bryant’s best friend, that woman, having passed away, set him on a path to destruction. He blamed the Martins and described them as the worst people in his life.

So, what happened on the fateful day?

Martin woke up at about 6:00 AM and saw his girlfriend off to visit her parents. He switched on the burglar alarm and left the house at around 9:40. He went to the Seascape bed and breakfast and shot and stabbed both for Martins to death. He then travelled to the Port Arthur Historic Site parked his car in the parking lot near the Broad Arrow Cafe and entered the cafe with the sports bag and a video camera. He purchased a meal, ate the meal on the deck outside and then walked back into the cafe to return his tray. This is when the story becomes macabre.

He pulled out his bag on the table, pulled the gun out and started shooting at people. Within 15 to 30 seconds he had already killed 12 people in the cafe and 10 more were wounded. He moved into the gift shop, killed another 10 people and wounded two more. He walked out into the car park and killed another four people and injured another six. You see the pattern here. He just was on a rampage. He ended up getting into his car and actually sounding the horn and waving at people as he was leaving this scene.

He killed a number of people on the way out including a woman and her two daughters who were three and six. Just horrible. He ended up hijacking a car with a man named Glen Pears in that car and his girlfriend Zoe Hall. He forced Pears into the boot of his car, and then shot Pears’s his girlfriend who was trying to climb into the driver’s seat of her car.

He headed to the Seascape Bed and Breakfast again and forced Pears inside and handcuffed him to a stair rail in the house, and at some point, he also set the BMW on fire.

The police arrive shortly afterwards, and after an 18-hour stand-off, they caught him the next day when the guesthouse was set on fire and Bryant came running out of the house on fire himself with his back and buttocks severely burned.

He was arrested and taken for treatment in a local hospital where his victims were being treated and it was later discovered that Pears, the man he had kidnapped, had been shot before the stand-off had even begun.

So, by the end of the day, the body count was at 35 dead people and 23 wounded people. An incredibly tragic event and the only positive side to this event was the fact that after this, shortly after this, all states and territories of Australia restricted the legal ownership and use of self-loading rifles, self-loading shotguns, and tightened controls on their legal use by recreational shooters. The government initiated a mandatory buyback scheme with the owners paid according to what they had in their possession.

Anyway, guys it’s an incredibly sad story, but I think if you come to Australia, if you go to Tasmania, in particular, you’re probably going to hear about how this happened and the tight laws in Australia surrounding guns. Australia is incredibly different from places like the U.S.. I have never seen a gun in public. I have never seen a hand gun. It’s just a very different place if you come here. That is something that you will see.

Anyway, guys I hope you enjoy this episode. I know it was a bit of a long one. Keep at it and I will see you soon.

See you, guys!

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AE 493 – Expression: Go Pear-Shaped

By pete — 3 months ago

Learn Australian English in this expression episode of The Aussie English Podcast where I teach you to use to GO PEAR-SHAPED like a native speaker.

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AE 493 – Expression: Go Pear-Shaped

I was out the front mowing the nature strip and I could see a bit of attention on the other side of the bridge of people looking and taking photos, and I thought, wow, there’s something going on, so (I) went and had a squiz, and then once I saw what I saw, I thought, yeah, this is gutsy.

Honestly, it looked like someone (had) done damage to the bridge since the way it’s got the hole in it. I had no idea who’d done it. I thought, well, someone around here has got talent.

I probably should’ve got permission, but I thought, I’ll just go and have an experiment. It’s only chalk. It’s going to last a couple of days. If it rains, it’ll come straight off. I did it on the Friday, (I) thought, if it’s not washed off by the Sunday, I can go down with some water and hose it off.

****

Hey, you mob. How’s it going? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English, the number one podcast for anyone and everyone or wanting to learn Australian English.

Remember, guys, if you would like the transcript and the MP3s to this podcast, you can get access to all of them, unlimited access, when you go to theAussieEnglishPodcast.com, hit ‘sign up’, and for the price of one coffee every single month you will get access to the MP3s and the transcripts to download them and listen to them, consume them, do whatever you want with them, anytime, anywhere.

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With that, let’s go through the movie scene there at the start. Now, I found this on Facebook this week and it blew me away. It blew my mind. It was mind-blowing. I loved it.

So, this was the story of how this mural was painted on a bridge wall in Warrnambool, which is in Victoria close to where I live. Well, three hours away, but relatively close, you know, in the grand scheme of things in Australia. And this guy painted this mural on the wall, another guy found it and saw it, and decided that he would prefer this mural to be permanent instead of just washing away next time it rained as the mural had been done in chalk, which is what the original artist’s plan was, for this to be just temporary.

Anyway, that video will be linked in the transcript. I really recommend going and checking it out. It was an amazing video full of humour, Australian humour, and it was from ABC News. Okay? So, these guys are an amazing resource if you want to practice your Australian English by watching the Australian news. I love ABC News. You can check them out on Facebook and they also have a live stream on YouTube that is 24 hours a day. Just type in ‘ABC News’ into YouTube and you will find that. Anywhere, guys.

That’s it for the intro. A quick apology too if I sound a little congested. I have just moved back to Melbourne or to Geelong, rather, which is about 70 kilometers south of Melbourne, and I’m living at my parents’ place and they have cats, and I’m allergic to cats. It always takes me a few weeks to get acclimated to them, to sort of… for my body to become used to them, and I have to take anti-histamines in the meantime, you know, and I feel like I to sneeze all the time. Anyway.

As usual, let’s get into an Australian joke, and I’ve got a killer for you today. (I) told this one to Kel and she was like, you need to include this in the episode. Alright, here’s the joke.

Why did kangaroos hate rainy days? Why did kangaroos hate rainy days? Because their children play inside.

What do you reckon? Is it a good one?

Why do kangaroos hate rainy days? Because their kids play inside. Get it? Because kangaroos have pouches. Anyway.

Today’s expression, guys. Today’s expression is for things ‘to go pear-shaped’, ‘to go pear-shaped’. This was from Alexander who suggested this in the Aussie English Classroom. We all voted on it. Good job, Alex.

So, let’s go through the definitions of the words in this expression ‘to go pear-shaped’.

So, ‘go’. ‘Go’ can mean a lot of different things. You know, usually, it is talking about moving in a direction, right. You’re going forward, you’re going backward, you’re going to a place. But here, if ‘go’ is followed by an adjective here like ‘pear-shaped’, it’s more than it means to turn into something. So, to pass into or to be in a specified state, especially, an undesirable state. Right? So, it’s sort of like to turn bad, to become bad, to go bad. So, you might often hear things like ‘things have gone bad’, ‘things have gone wrong’, ‘things have gone awry’. Those are some collocations you’ll often hear with ‘go’, where it means to sort of change state, to pass into another state.

‘A pear’. ‘A pear’ is a sweet yellowish- or brownish-green edible fruit and it is narrow towards the stalk end above where it attaches to the tree and the wider towards the base. So, you’ll often have likened overweight men to apples and overweight women to pears, right? Because men seem to carry the weight around their stomachs and women around their hips. So, men are shaped like apples, women like pears.

‘Shaped’. The word ‘shaped’ is the external form contours or outline of someone or something, right. I am obviously shaped like a person. If you carved a rock into the shape of a love heart, maybe a heart, okay. It is shaped like a heart.

Now, we can combine words, often nouns and adjectives, into compound adjectives. Right? So, this is where you’ve got multiple words describing something and we put a hyphen between them.

So, in this case ‘pear-shaped’ means ‘in the shape of a pear’, and instead of saying ‘in the shape of a pear’, it’s much quicker to just say ‘pear-shaped’. Okay?

So, let’s define the expression. If something ‘goes pear-shaped’, this means that it goes horribly wrong, it goes awry. So, for things to go bad, for things to go wrong. That is when things ‘go pear-shaped’.

So, I was looking around trying to find the origin of this expression and it seems like there’s no clear-cut origin for it. However, the first citation appears in a book called Air War South Atlantic in 1983, and it seems like it may have been slang from the Royal Air Force. Okay? And the quote from this book was, “There were two bangs very close together. The whole aircraft shook and things went ‘pear-shaped’ very quickly after that.” To say that, obviously, things went wrong, things went disastrous, right.

So, let’s go through some examples of how I would use this expression, ‘to go pear-shaped’, in day-to-day life, in real life. Alright.

Example number one. So, imagine you are planning a weekend trip away with the family. So, you want to go camping somewhere, somewhere nice nearby, maybe in a forest somewhere. So, if it’s nearby me, obviously, you could go to places like the Great Ocean Road or to Willson’s Prom, Wilson’s Promontory. You guys, if you’ve been to Victoria, may have been to these places. So, you put all your camping gear in the car, your tent, the ropes, the pegs, to hold the tent down, your portable gas stove, food supplies, sleeping gear, like mattresses that are inflatable and sleeping bags, and maybe a fishing rod or two. After you pile your kids in the car and you get your wife or your husband to get in the car as well, you jump in and you head off on the road towards this destination where you’re going to go camping. On the drive, the weather is beautiful and this was the whole reason that you wanted to go camping in the first place, you know, you were hoping for really good weather and it turned out to be the case. But then as soon as you get there, the clouds cover the sky, the day becomes overcast and rain starts pouring down, right. It starts raining cats and dogs, it starts pissing down, it’s raining heavily. So, because the weather’s turned so horrible, your plans of a wonderful weekend away camping with the family have gone pear-shaped. They’ve gone horribly wrong, they’ve gone awry, your plans went pear-shaped.

Example number two. Imagine you are a soldier in the army and you have a platoon of men that you obviously are a soldier with. You guys have a mission. You’ve got to go behind enemy lines and you have to capture a certain building. Okay? So, it’s really dark. It’s dark at night when you guys have to leave. There’s no moon. You’re hoping to be able to get there under the cover of darkness, meaning that no one will see you. You can use darkness as a means to hide whilst you infiltrate the enemy territory. So, just as you’re entering the building with all your men, an enemy soldier spots you. He puts a light on you and things go pear-shaped. You have to bail, you have to escape, you have to run away as your platoon receives enemy fire, meaning that the enemy is firing their weapons at the platoon. But fortunately, you make it back alive despite the mission going pear-shaped. Things went pear-shaped.

Example number three. Alright, imagine you are a pregnant woman, right, a woman who is close to giving birth. You’ve got two kids and a husband already, obviously, and this means that, usually, the house is incredibly noisy. There’s a lot of noise. There’s a lot of kids running around screaming and you find it very difficult to take a breather, to take a time-out, to have time to yourself to relax. Fortunately, this weekend, your husband’s offered to take the kids to the beach so that you can have a day off, right. You can take time for yourself and watch your favorite chick-flick, kick back, have your favourite nibblies out of the fridge.’Nibblies’ being food, something you like to nibble on, your ‘nibblies’, that’s a good Australian slang term. So, you put some chocolate out of the fridge after the kids have left with your husband, gone to the beach. You sit back, you kick your feet up, you relax, but just as the movie begins, your kids and husband rush back inside, and it turns out, when they got to the beach, there was a shark at the beach. And so, there were sirens going off, the lifesavers were there saying no one can go in the water, you can’t swim, it’s not safe. So, as a result, they all came home and your plans have gone pear-shaped. Your plans have been disrupted, things have gone bad, the situation’s turned horrible, things have gone awry, things have gone pear-shaped.

So, hopefully, by now, guys, you’ll understand and can use the expression ‘to go pear shaped’, it means for things to go bad or for things to go awry, for things to go wrong.

So, as usual, let’s go through a little listen and repeat exercise here, guys, where you can practice your pronunciation. By now, I am sure that you guys know the drill. Let’s just get straight into it, guys. Listen and repeat after me. Let’s go.

To go

To go pear-

To go pear-shaped x 5

Good job. Now, I’m going to put this into a sentence with ‘to make’ in the past tense, like, I made…, you made…, he made…, she made…, etc., …things go pear-shaped. Okay? I made things go pear-shaped, you made things go pear-shaped. So, listen and repeat after me, guys.

I made things go pear-shaped

You made things go pear-shaped

He made things go pear-shaped

She made things go pear-shaped

We made things go pear-shaped

They made things go pear-shaped

It made things go pear-shaped

Good job, guys. Good job. Remember, if you would like to go through this exercise in more detail with a fine-tooth comb and learn all of the more interesting aspects of pronunciation in English here, join up at theAussieEnglishClassroom.com, and you will get a pronunciation video for this episode, as well as all the previous episodes, and it will really help you improve your English quickly.

Today’s Aussie fact, guys. Let’s just get straight into it. Today’s Aussie fact I thought I would talk about cane toads, and I’m not sure if I’ve talked about these before or not, but maybe you guys have heard of cane toads in Australia. If you go north, you will definitely see cane toads.

So, I recently saw a news article this week about the genome having been cracked for cane toads, meaning that the genome of the cane toad, the DNA sequences of the entire DNA of the cane toad, has been successfully sequenced now, and it got me thinking about the cane toad, and I thought I would go through a number of different facts about it. Okay? And there’ll be a link in the transcript for this article if you’re interested.

Alright, cane toads. So, cane toads are a type of frog and they were introduced into Australia, they are an invasive species in Australia. They are not natural. They aren’t endemic here.

They’re about four to six inches long when they get to fully-grown size and they can weigh up to about four pounds, so close to two kilos, which is pretty impressive for a frog, and the females actually end up a lot larger than the males, and this may not come as a surprise, because females are, obviously, the animal that produces all the eggs. The males produce the sperm. The females produce the eggs. So, they’re egg producers and layers.

Once fully grown, the females can deposit up to 30,000 eggs in a single night. That’s crazy. And it only takes three days, 36 hours, for these eggs to hatch into tiny tadpoles. This is obviously one of the reasons these guys are such successful invasive species.

So, these tadpoles slowly grow their back and their front legs, usually the back first then the front, and they transform into froglets, young frogs, after only four to eight weeks.

They can live up to 10 or 15 years in the wild and up to 35 years in captivity. That’s four years older than me. Crazy!

Cane toads are highly poisonous, though, they’re very dangerous, and produce a toxin in the glands on the back of their neck so that if anyone picks them up or bites them, attacks them, often this toxin, when pressure is put on this gland, is released, it’s spat out of the frog and it can kill really quickly. So, that’s why there’s such a danger to native animals, especially, animals that hunt them.

So, the cane toad isn’t native to Australia. We established that at the start. And it was ignorantly introduced into Australia in 1935, so 83 years ago, by a man named Reginald Mungomery. So, he brought these over to Australia in a flight from Hawaii where he picked up a 102 of these cane toads, 51 males and 51 females. And this guy was supposedly trying to fix the problem of cane beetles, cane grubs, that were destroying sugar cane crops in northern Australia. So, these insects were eating the crops and he thought, you know, I’ll get some frogs. Obviously, frogs eat insects, and we’ll let them go, and hopefully this will sort out the cane beetle problem.

The problem was that the frogs can’t jump very high, right? So, they became beetles at the top of the cane, the sugar cane, which can be metres high, and the frogs don’t get up that high.

So, these toads were initially released around Cairns and Gordonvale and Innisfail, in Far North Queensland, and shortly after this ‘the march’ of the cane toad began. And this is known as the ‘Invasion Front’ in Australia. I remember this at school always being spoken about. Where the cane toads at now? Which cities or towns are they about to get to?

So, the march of the cane toad moved at about 10 kilometres a year until the 1960s when it significantly began to pick up pace, it began to speed up. By 1945, the cane toads had reached Brisbane, which was 1,600 kilometres south of where they were first released. They started knocking on the doors of people in Byron Bay in New South Wales in 1965. And by 1984, they were stealing the cat food from unsuspecting kitties in the Northern Territory. And in 2009, they finally marched across into Western Australia on the far west of the continent.

So, until today, the cane toad is one of the most catastrophic ecological disasters to have ever happened in Australia, much worse than any other introduced species. Whether it’s rabbits or foxes or donkeys, the cane toad has been devastating.

Despite this, scientists are still hopeful that they can fight against the cane toad by coming up with unique ways to control cane toad numbers. Although, we’ll never be able to completely eradicate the cane toad, hopefully, studies such as the one I mentioned at the start, where the genome has now been completely sequenced, will allow scientists to identify weaknesses in the DNA of the cane toad or maybe in diseases that affect the cane toad, but don’t affect native animals, and they can use these to exploit the cane toad and control their numbers in the future.

So, my question for you today is one: have you ever seen a cane toad in real life if you’ve been to Australia? And two: have you seen the awesome cane toad documentary Cane Toads: An Unnatural History? So, I recommend checking out that doco. It is amazing. And it is full of Australian humour and you will learn a lot about… not just Australia and Australian culture, but also about the cane toad too if you check that out.

Anyway, guys, that’s enough for today. I am struggling, I am very congested, and I’m going to have to edit this episode a lot to get rid of all the coughing and repeating of myself. Anyway, I hope you have an amazing week, I hope you’re enjoying yourselves, and I chat to you soon. See you, guys.

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AE 491 – Expression: The World Is Your Oyster

By pete — 3 months ago

Learn Australian English in this expression episode of The Aussie English Podcast where I teach you how to use the expression THE WORLD IS YOUR OYSTER.

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AE 491 – Expression: The World Is your Oyster

Oyster farming is quite a manual job. There is planning involved as well, but a lot of the work involves manual labour and jumping into cool water in winter. So, we have seasonal benefits where in summer time it’s quite nice and very enjoyable out on the water, and in the winter time we’re in and out as quick as we can, get a load on board, and then back to the shed.

****

Alrighty. Let’s get started. No window open today, guys, no window.

Alright, so, g’day, you mob. I hope you’re going well. I hope you’re havinig a good weekend. I hope you’re having an amazing week. Welcome to this episode of Aussie English. This is the number one podcast for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English.

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If you are the kind of student, however, who likes to study and wants to get a lot more out of these kinds of episodes, and wants to study the vocab in these episodes, the expressions, some of the pronunciation tips in more depth, and kind of wants to go through this with a fine-tooth comb, I suggest signing up at TheAussieEnglishClassroom.com, and getting into that classroom and consuming all of the content in there. There are videos for each of these episodes each week and you will get access to all the previous expression episodes too, as well as some other courses in there on pronunciation amongst other things. Anyway, guys.

That’s the intro. That’s enough of that. Welcome to this episode. I hope you like the intro scene there. I’m always trying to add these things in so you get access to other Australian accents and you also get introduced to things like the ABC Australia’s YouTube channel there, which is where that little snippet came from, so that you can find other resources and learn about Australian culture.

So, that was from, as I said, the ABC Australia’s YouTube channel, a little series called My Australia where it was following a Chinese girl called Jingjing as she visited an oyster farm in Port Lincoln on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula. So, I really recommend checking out that entire video. Go to the ABC YouTube channel. I will leave a link in the transcript so that you can do so, but it’s a great way to watch more of their videos to learn about Australian culture and practice your listening comprehension for the Aussie English fact. Anyway.

Let’s dive into the Aussie joke for today, guys, and it is a shellfish joke, because, obviously, the expression is related to shellfish. So, the joke is:

What did the oyster say to the crab when he took his pearl? What did the oyster side of the crab when he took his pearl?

Don’t be so ‘shellfish’. Don’t be so ‘shellfish’.

Do you get it? The play on words here, the pun here, is with the word ‘selfish’ and ‘shellfish’, right. “Don’t be so selfish” would be the real way of saying that. Don’t steal something, don’t hold on to it, don’t keep it to yourself, don’t be selfish. And the joke here is that oysters are shellfish and we often call crab ‘shellfish’ as well so, don’t be so ‘shellfish’.

Alright, so today’s expression is ‘the world is your oyster’. The world is your oyster. I wonder if you guys have heard this expression before. This came from Michal who is from Poland. He is an awesome guy. He’s in our Aussie English Classroom Facebook group and his posting videos all the time when he’s out and about walking around. So, they’re always interesting to watch. If you guys want to be a part of that, go to theAussieEnglishClassroom.com, and then asked to join the group, and we post videos each week practicing the expressions from these episodes. Anyway.

Let’s define the words in this expression.

So, ‘the world’. ‘The world’ is the Earth, the planet on which we live, together with its countries and its people. So, it’s not just the physical rock that is the planet, but it’s also every country is a part of this world and every person is a part of this world. Right. The world.

‘Is’, obviously, present tense third person ‘to be’. He is. She is. It is.

‘Your’. ‘Your’ is the possessive pronoun for ‘you’. This is your thing. This is your car. This is your oyster. This is your phone.

And, ‘an oyster’, if you don’t know what ‘an oyster’ is, ‘an oyster’ is any number of bivalve molluscs with rough irregular shells, and they’re usually eaten raw as a delicacy, but they also might be farmed for pearls, the jewellery that you will get out of them. Those small spherical white, kind of iridescent, pieces of jewellery made by shellfish.

So, let’s define the expression ‘the world is your oyster’. ‘The world is your oyster’. If someone says to you that ‘the world is your oyster’, it’s the idea that you are in a position to take all the opportunities that life has to offer. So, you can do anything that you want. You can go anywhere you want. Everything is a possibility for you. ‘The world is your oyster’.

So, this is, I think, the first expression where it’s actually from Shakespeare. So, you guys might know Shakespeare, the famous British writer, playwright, I guess. And he coined this phrase. This phrase is from the Merry Wives of Windsor where Falstaff says, “I will not lend a penny.”, to a guy called Pistol who says, “Why then the world’s mine oyster which I with sword will open.”, and then Falstaff replies, “Not a penny.”.

So, the idea here is, and it’s the English’s kind of screwed up, you know, this isn’t how we would speak, today at least. So, the original implication of this phrase that Pistol is saying, “Why then the world’s mine oyster which I with sword will open.”, it’s referring to using violent means, i.e. using a sword, to steal his fortune, i.e. the pearl, that one finds in an oyster.

So, we inherit this phrase absent, though, of its original violent connotation, to mean that the world is yours or ours to enjoy. Okay? You can get everything out of it.

So, let’s go through some examples of how I would use this expression in real day-to-day sort of situations. Okay.

So, example number one. Imagine that you are a student in your final year of school. So, you’re in high school in Australia, you are in year 12, you’ve just completed all your exams, you’ve passed your exams with flying colours, so you’ve done incredibly well in these exams. When you get your marks back, your Enter Score, which is what we used to refer to as the final score you got at the end of high school so that you could enter into university, when you get your marks back, your Enter Score is as high as it could possibly be. So, you’ve done as good as you could have possibly done. And it will allow you to enter any university in Australia, do any kind of course that you would like, whether it’s medicine, science, arts, economics, law, engineering, you have your pick of the litter and you can choose anything you desire. So, as a result, when your parents find this out, they might be as proud as punch, incredibly proud, and they might say, “Well done! The world is now your oyster.”. You can choose anything you want. You can go anywhere you want. The world is your oyster.

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Number two. Imagine now you are that same student, okay, and you have entered university and you are studying science. But imagine you’re from a non-English-speaking country, right. You’re Brazil, from China, from India, from Nepal, from somewhere in Africa, you know, Zimbabwe maybe. And besides studying science, you’re also working your butt off, you’re working incredibly hard, to learn to speak English at a fluent and proficient level. So, you’re a very studious and diligent person who’s always studying science all day at university only to get home in the afternoon and start studying English. And the reason you’re studying English is because you want to have as many options as possible for your future career. Right? You want to be a world-renowned scientist one day and unfortunately for non-English speakers it requires that you learn English, right, so that you can take part in the English-speaking world of science. So, you know if you work hard and finish a science degree and you have the ability to speak English fluently and at a very proficient level, the world will be your oyster. You’ll be able to travel anywhere, you’ll be able to work overseas in any country, English-speaking or not, because you can use English there, and you’ll be able to apply to any jobs and positions in countries where English fluency is a prerequisite. The world is going to be your oyster.

Example number three. Imagine that you are a racecar driver, a real hoon, a real rev head, you know, you’ve always grown up loving cars and driving fast, and it’s led you down the road to be a racecar driver. So as a kid you battle your way up. Maybe you were driving go karts and then suddenly you got into more powerful cars like V8 cars on the Bathurst circuit, but your ultimate goal has been to get good enough, to get enough experience under your belt, to get enough street cred, to get enough street credentials or credibility, in order to race in Formula One, in the F1. So, you have one final race where if you win this race you’re going to be able to then race in Formula One. You end up winning it by a milestone, by a landslide, you absolutely dominate, and you fulfil your dreams and can now race in the Formula One. So, the world is now your oyster. You can do anything you want to do. The world’s your oyster. Alright.

So, I hope you understand the expression now, guys, ‘the world’s your oyster’. It means that you are in a position to take every opportunity that life has to offer. You can do anything. Go anywhere. Every possibility in the world is yours.

So, as usual, let’s go through a listen and repeat exercise, guys, and then we will jump into the Aussie English fact where I’m going to talk about oysters and some of the economics of oysters in Australia and some interesting biological facts as well. So, the listen repeat exercise first. Listen and repeat after me, guys. If you want to practice your Australian accent, then pay attention to the details of how I pronounce these things, and if you are just interested in your English accent, whether it’s British, American, Singaporean, could be from anywhere else, you don’t want an Aussie English accent, then just use your normal accent. Okay, guys? Let’s go.

The

The world

The world is

The world is your

The world is your oyster x 5

Good job. So, now I say it using the phrases, “I said the world was my oyster”. “You said the world was your oyster”. Okay? So, it’s sort of like reported speech, but we’re going to use it in the simple past tense. Okay? So, listen and repeat after me and practice conjugating the verb ‘to say’ and ‘to be’ in the past tense. Let’s go.

I said the world was my oyster.

You said the world was your oyster.

He said the world was his oyster.

She said the world was her oyster.

We said the world was our oyster business.

They said the world was their oyster.

It said the world was its oyster.

Good job, guys. If you want access to the video that will be breaking down today’s pronunciation exercise and going into more depth about connected speech, pronunciation, intonation, all of that kind of stuff, make sure you jump into the Aussie English Classroom, guys. Sign up. Remember, it’s just one dollar for the first month, guys. You will have 30 days to give it a try before you have to pay the full fee. You’ve got nothing to lose. Give it a go and start upgrading your English. Anyway.

Australian fact. The Aussie English fact for today. We’re going to talk all about oysters and I’m going to be a little ‘shellfish’ and talk all by myself for five minutes, okay, about what I want to talk about. I’m being ‘shellfish’. Get it? Alright.

So, facts about oysters and the oyster farming industry in Australia.

So, oysters are a type of mollusk, as we said at the start there, guys, and it is a fancy way of saying a snail, right? A snail. Except these mollusks are from a group known as ‘bivalves’, which means ‘two shells’. So, any time you find things like… I don’t know. What are they? Clams and scallops, I guess. It’s hard for me to think of different kinds of mollusks. Those are all bivalves where you’ve got two sides to their shell.

So, oysters can range in size from a few centimetres to a foot across, so 30 centimetres across, and they can live for many decades, sometimes up to 40 years, right? That’s older than me. Mind-blowing.

Oysters live in marine and brackish water habitats, so the ocean, estuaries, rock pools, that sort of stuff, salty water, but not in freshwater streams, rivers, and lakes, etc.

There are three species commonly eaten in Australia. So, oysters are a common food here in Australia. The Sydney Rock Oyster, the Pacific Oyster, and the Flat Oyster. The Pacific Oyster is commonly eaten worldwide, however, the Sydney Rock Oyster is an endemic Australian species, it’s only found here in Australia, and has an annual production of 70 million oysters. That’s like three oysters for every person in Australia, and that rakes in about $35 million every year. Pretty pennies. That’s a lot of money.

So, oyster farming is one of, if not the, oldest and most valuable aquaculture industries in Australia, and it has been contributing to the economy for over 140 years.

Besides being part of the food industry, though, oysters are also a big part of the jewellery industry, or more specifically, the pearling industry. The pearling industry has also been around for over 100 years since the late 1800s when pearlers is first established themselves in Broome, which is on the north western coast of Western Australia in the Kimberley region.

So, by the year 1910, Broome was the largest pearling centre in the world benefiting from newly introduced diving suits as well as its fertile waters and the booming international pearl button market of the time.

The pearls extracted from Western Australian oysters are some of the largest and most lustrous found in the world, and in recent years a single Australian pearl fetched a price of $1.5 million dollars when it was sold. That’s ridiculous. That’s like a house or two. Jesus!

Aside from the pearls, the shells of oysters known as ‘Mother of Pearl’ as well as their meat is also highly valued and traded around the world.

It’s nice to hear how humans can exploit oysters and make money by feeding them to people or beautifying the rich with their shells and pearls, but what about the environment? What do oysters do for the environment?

So, oyster shells provide important habitat and substrate for other marine-dwelling organisms as their shells are uneven and when they grow they tend to grow together on rocks, and they provide numerous nooks and crannies for other animals such as worms and snails, sea squirts, sponges, small crabs, and fishes, all to hide amongst these shells and they can more easily evade predators thanks to these friendly oyster neighbours.

Oysters are also filter feeders, that is that they feed by filtering the water of things including microscopic plankton, suspended particles in the water, and even bacteria. And they can filter four to five litres per hour, which on a daily basis is the equivalent of 50 x 2-litre Coke bottles. Wow! That’s a lot. 100 litres a day! As a result, they keep water’s incredibly pristine clean, and other organisms like seagrasses and seaweeds and coral can, thus, more easily absorb light and grow healthily, you know, to keep these sorts of environments really, really healthy.

The last cool fact about oysters is that they can change their gender, they can change their sex. All oysters start out as males and they spawn, that is, they release sperm into the water in their early life. However, at around two to three years of age, they’ve grown to a big enough size and they have developed sufficient energy stores that they can now produce eggs and release eggs when they spawn, you know, as females, because, obviously, it requires a lot more energy to create one egg than it does to create one sperm.

So, let me know, guys, have you ever eaten an oyster? And are you the proud owner of some real pearls?

Fun fact about me, I do not own any pearls, unfortunately, and I have never eaten an oyster. I’ve seen them many times, but to be honest they kind of freaked me out, and I am yet to ever eat one.

So, with that guys, I hope you enjoy this episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I hope you have an amazing weekend and I’ll see you next time.

All the best, guys.

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AE 488 – Expression: Bang For Your Buck

By pete — 3 months ago

Learn Australian English in this expression episode of The Aussie English Podcast where I teach you to use the expression BANG FOR YOUR BUCK.

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AE 488 – Expression: Bang for Your Buck

Well, Aussies have long had love affairs with their cars, right, in particular, the big V8 or the muscle car.

Well, as Mike Dalton reports, recently, there was a battle to find the best.

It’s a question of honour for local motoring enthusiasts, who makes the best V8s, the locals or the septics? And so, Unique Car Magazine’s drawn together two generations of V8s from either side to duke it out in the battle of the donk.

****

G’day… Oh! Wait a second, guys! Wait a second. Sorry, I’ve just realised. window’s open. Window’s open. All right. So, let’s try that again.

G’day, guys, and welcome to this episode of Aussie English. The number one Aussie… the number one Aussie English Podcast?! The number one podcast for anyone and everyone or wanting to learn Australian English or English in general, guys. This is an intermediate to advanced English speakers’ podcast for anyone who’s really trying to get to native-like level of comprehension when they’re speaking or just trying to understand English, and specifically, Australian English. Obviously, that is the accent that I have.

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If, on the other hand, you are just after the transcripts and the MP3s for these episodes, because you just like to be able to study your own way, in your own time, with the transcripts, make sure you go to TheAussieEnglishPodcast.com, and you can sign up there for the price of a coffee every month. It is $4.99 for a monthly subscription there where you can download or the content for the episodes, the transcripts and the MP3s. Alright, anyway.

With that out of the way, the movie scene from the start there today guys it was a story from Channel 9, which is one of the 4 or 5 channels that we have free-to-air on Australian TV, although, free-to-air TV seems to be in its death throes at the moment and dying off as the Internet and media on the Internet becomes more and more consumed by people, right. I don’t think… I can’t even remember the last time I was watching normal TV. Anyway.

The story was from Channel 9 and it was on muscle cars. So, we’re going to tackle that in the fact about Australia today, and we’re also going to talk about it in one of the examples today. But if you would like to watch that entire story on muscle cars from Channel Nine, you can check out the link in the transcript, okay, to check it out.

Aside from that, let’s just get into it, guys. To start with, an Aussie joke, an Aussie joke. They’re all pearlers. They’re all rippers. They’re all beauties. I know you guys have a love for his jokes so I’m going to keep them coming. Alright, so here we go. Here we go. Today’s joke.

A guy walks into a mechanic shop and he says, I need a petrol cap for my Holden Commodore. The mechanic looks over to him and says, yeah, okay. Sounds like a fair trade! Sounds like a fair trade!

Do you get it? Do you get it, guys? Alright, so a guy walks into a mechanic shop, somewhere that some mechanic works who repairs cars, and he says to the mechanic, I need a petrol cap, as in the cap that goes on the petrol tank where you obviously fill up the car with petrol, I need a petrol cap for my Holden Commodore. Holden Commodores are a kind of car in Australia that are ubiquitous, they are everywhere, they are a dime a dozen, they are all over the shop. You will see them as far as the eye can see in Australia. So, he asked for a petrol cap for his Holden vehicles, as a result of Holden cars being cheap, common, the mechanic says, yeah, okay, sounds like a fair trade.

So, the joke there is that the mechanic thinks that this guy wants to trade his Holden Commodore for a petrol cap, right. That’s how cheap and bad those cars are in the mind of the mechanic. Whereas, the guy just wants a new petrol cap for his Holden Commodore. Anyway. That’s the joke. Okay? That’s the joke.

So, today’s expression is ‘bang for your buck’ and this is from Esmaeil. He suggested this in the private Facebook group for members of The Aussie English Classroom. Remember, if you want to sign up there and be a part of selecting these expressions, posting videos, hanging out with the community, then sign up at TheAussieEnglishClassroom.com. Good job, Esmaeil. This was an amazing suggestion, as it’s an expression that I use quite often.

You might hear this as ‘get more bang for your buck’, ‘to get the best bang for your buck’, ‘to get better bang for your buck’. So, it can be in different variations, but it is relatively common all over Australia and in America, and maybe even Britain as well, although, they may say ‘pound’ instead of ‘buck’, I am not sure.

Also, I want to give an honourable mention to Emma. She came equal first with Esmaeil and she had suggested the expression ‘to put the mockers on someone’, although, I’d never heard this expression before, and that’s why I said, you know what, I’m going to let Esmaeil have this one as I do use ‘bang for your buck’.

So, let’s go through and define the words in the expression ‘bang for your buck’, right. Okay?

So, ‘bang’. ‘A bang’. You know, ‘boom!’. ‘A bang’ is literally the sound of an explosion. You know? If a nuclear bomb goes off, I am certain it goes off with a bang. If you shoot a gun, it makes a bang. If a car breaks down, the engine quite often goes bang, right. But in this sense, when they’re saying ‘bang’, they mean ‘value’, the value of something. Okay? We’ll get to that when we talk about the definition.

‘A buck’. ‘A buck’, I’m sure you guys have heard of if you’ve been listening to this podcast for quite a while. I often say ‘a buck’ when I’m talking about ‘a dollar’, right. So, how much was the coffee? Four bucks. How much was the car? A few thousand bucks. How much was the camera? Two thousand bucks. So, you’ll often hear ‘a buck’ or ‘bucks’ used in Australia is also used in America. And again, I’m not sure, I don’t think it’s used in Britain, because they don’t use the dollar, they use pounds.

So, that’s it for the definitions in the expression ‘bang for your buck’, right. You guys all know what the word ‘for’ and the word ‘your’ mean already.

Expression definition wise, though, this is a simple expression. If you get good bang for your buck, the idea here is that ‘bang’ is value, so you get good value for your buck, you get good value for your dollar. So, it just means to get your money’s worth or to get incredibly good value for the money that you have spent on something, right?

So, I went and tried to find the expression origin for ‘bang for your buck’ and there was an early citation of this expression, ‘more bang for your buck’, that was placed in an advert in a publication called Metals and Plastics Publications all the way back in 1940. So, I assume the ad referred to a product that was low cost, but really high value. Hence, being ‘good bang for your buck’ or ‘being the best bang for your buck’, compared to other competitors. Right?

But then, I was also further reading about this on a Phrases.org.uk blog post and they were talking about the origin being related to nuclear weapons. Okay? Hear me out. Hear me out. Okay? So, I’m going to read out a little bit of this article for you guys, because I thought it was really interesting. Okay?

So, you can imagine that generals and political leaders have argued over the costs of military since the beginning of time. Their conversations have probably not changed much from the general saying, we need more cannons, nuclear weapons, and soldiers, and the country’s leader, the Emperor, the President, the king, saying, well, the people need food. Can’t you manage with what you’ve got? Right? So, there has been that push and pull throughout history.

So, American president Dwight Eisenhower faced something of a dilemma in 1953. He was a military man to his socks and was inclined to augment defense in the face of the perceived ‘reds under the bed threat’, right, the Communists being a threat there, but he was also a Republican US President and, as such, politically wedded to cutting state spending. So, his solution was simple, increase the armed forces by decreasing their budget.

In ordinary circumstances, that circle would be difficult to square. The solution that the US Joint Chiefs of Staff came up with, which they titled ‘The New Look’ was a policy of using nuclear weapons in any conflict bigger than what they called ‘a brush fire war’–I would take it a very small war, something that’s not very important–and that allowed them to radically reduce the numbers of servicemen and replace those servicemen with comparatively inexpensive atomic bombs.

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You may have seen those videos online sometimes where you see a nuclear bomb go off in the distance and soldiers start walking towards it. 1950s, guys, the 1950s.

So, this was described in a story in the Winona Republican Herald in December of 1953, and the story also reported that Admiral Arthur Radford as describing the policy as the ‘more bang for your buck theory’. Okay?

So, that’s where this idea really comes from and I think it climbed to popularity after the 1950s. Alright.

So, let’s go through some examples now of how you could use this expression, ‘bang for your buck’, ‘to get bang for your buck’, ‘to get more or better bang for your buck’ like a native speaker.

So, example number one. Imagine that you want to buy a muscle car. Right? So, you’re a bit of a rev head, you love your cars, and you want something with a lot of power. So, you’re probably after something with a bit of umph, probably a V8 of some kind, something with a lot of horsepower, a lot of kilowatts. So, you go to your local car dealership and check out the second-hand cars that he has for sale, and after looking for a few minutes the car salesman comes up and he says, well, what can I help you with? What would you like? And you might say, I want as much power as I can get for the best price. And he says, you know, not to worry! I’ve got the perfect car for you. And he goes off and finds you this beautiful second-hand V8 Holden Commodore or Ford Falcon, right. These are two very popular V8 sort of muscle cars in Australia. So, he finds this car and he says to you, this is going to give you a lot of bang for your buck. It’s going to give you the best bang for your buck. They’re cheap as chips to repair, and as well, Holdens and Fords are a dime a dozen in Australia. They are everywhere. So, they’re cheap to buy.

Example number two. You’ve decided that your house is old and needs renovating. And so, you’ve decided to bite the bullet and finally get around to beginning a reno on your house. ‘A reno’ being the slang term for ‘a renovation’. So, you’re trying to pinch pennies, you try to save as much money as possible, hence, doing the reno yourself or with your wife, family, friends, instead of hiring some professional tradies to do it for you, right? That would be a cheaper way of doing it if you had the knowhow and you could do it yourself. So, you hit up the local Bunnings Warehouse, a household hardware chain of stores in Australia. If you guys live here, you’ll know those huge factories that are green and red called Bunnings, Bunnings Warehouse. So, you go and chat to the people that work there and tell them that you are doing a reno at home, and you give them a list of things that you require. You give them a list to sink their teeth into and go and find all this stuff that you need. If you want to ask them to give you the best value for money possible so that the items you buy are of the highest quality possible that you can afford, you might ask them, how can I get the best bang for my buck? What should I buy if I’m trying to get more bang for my buck, if I’m trying to get my money’s worth, if I’m trying to get the best value, right? The worker might say to you, not to worry, I’ll search through every nook and cranny in this store, in this huge warehouse, and sort you out with all the gear that you need, all the supplies that you need, to renovate your house like a pro. And then Bob’s your uncle, he goes off, finds the stuff, comes back, kits you out with everything you need, and gives you great value for money. He gives you the best bang for your buck.

Example number three. Imagine that you are a gun enthusiast. Although, I don’t think there’s many of these in Australia, but for the sake of this example, imagine that you love guns. You are a responsible gun owner. You have a gun safe that you keep your guns in, and you have another safe that you keep your ammunition in, and you keep both of them safely under lock and key so that no family members or kids can get their hands on these weapons. So, maybe you loved hunting and that’s why you’ve got the guns. You like game hunting, maybe feral animals like deer or pigs or camels. You love hunting them in Australia. Or maybe even native animals. You can hunt kangaroos in Australia. You usually catch up with your mates on weekends and you guys kit yourselves out with your guns, with scopes, with the camo gear–meaning ‘camouflage gear’, the stuff that you wear to blend in with the surroundings–and all of the rest of it, and then you go bush, meaning you go into the bush, you go into the forest or into the isolated areas to go hunting. So, one day your mate shows up and he has a huge new gun of some kind, right? Maybe a rifle of some huge caliber. You know… I don’t know, a 50-caliber gun, right? This huge weapon. You might say to him, Wow, man! That’s a big gun. I hope you haven’t bitten off more than you can chew, I hope your eyes aren’t bigger than your stomach, and I hope you can handle that gun as it looks like it’s a bit much for you. He might reply, no stress, mate. It’s fine and works well and I can handle it. I went to the gun store, told them that I wanted as much bang for my buck as possible, so they gave me this little beauty. And considering the value, she’s definitely the best bang for my buck that I could find. And figuratively, that’s true, but also literally, it’s probably also the loudest bang for his buck too. Right?

So, there you go, guys. That is the expression, ‘bang for your buck’. I hope you understand it now and it means to have value for your money, to get value for your dollar, to get your money’s worth when you purchase something.

So, as usual, let’s go through a little listen and repeat exercise, guys. Today’s is a bit more of an advanced one. Okay? So, we’ll go through it. We’ll go through the expression ‘to get the best bang for your buck’ first, and then, I want to go through using the expression ‘to be after something’, ‘to be after something’. And in English this means, ‘to want something’. I’m after some food. I’m after a drink. I’m after a few friends in Australia. I’m after something. I want something. Okay, guys? So, listen and repeat after me, and remember if you would like to practice this lesson as well as all the previous expression lessons in more detail, sign up at TheAussieEnglishClassroom.com. Anyway. Listen and repeat after me.

To
To get
To get the
To get the best
To get the best bang
To get the best bang for
To get the best bang for your
To get the best bang for your buck x 5

Alright. Good job. Now let’s go through the phrase ‘to be after the best bang for your buck’. Okay, we’ll conjugate through each pronoun here in the present tense. Let’s go.

I’m after the best bang for my buck.
You’re after the best bang for your buck.
He’s after the best bang for his buck.
She’s after the best bang for her buck.
We’re after the best bang for our buck.
They’re after the best bang for their buck.
It’s after the best bang for its buck.

Good job, guys. Good job. Let’s just dive straight into the Aussie fact today.

So, today I wanted to talk about racing in Australia, because it’s related to muscle cars and I thought, okay, muscle cars and racing in Australia, Bathurst, the Bathurst races that occur every year are always with muscle cars, with Holdens and Fords. Alright.

So, let’s talk about some motor racing history in Australia, specifically, I want to tackle the races that occur in Bathurst at Mount Panorama. Okay.

So, the Mount Panorama Circuit is a motor racing track located in Bathurst in New South Wales and Australia. This is the South East Coast, Central Coast of Australia. It’s situated on a hill with dual official names of ‘Mount Panorama’ and ‘Wahluu’. And it’s world-renowned for being the home of two annual races in Australia. Number one the Bathurst 1000 motor race, which is held every October each year, and number two, the Bathurst 12-hour event, which is held every February.

The track is approximately 6.2 kilometers long, which is exactly 4 miles long, and is technically considered a street circuit as it is on a public road, which has normal speed restrictions when no racing events are being held, and, as a result, there are numerous residences that live around this track where they can actually only get access on the circuit. So, that must be a real pain in the arse when these events are held, because they wouldn’t otherwise be able to get to their houses. So, they must have to stock up on food and stuff during those days.

So, from the start-finish line, the track can be divided up into three main sections. Number one: the short pit straight and then a tight left turn into a long steep mountain straight as the road climbs up the hill. Number two: the tight narrow section across the top of the mountain itself. And then, number three: the long downhill section of Conrod Straight with the very fast chase and the turn back on to pit straight to complete the lap.

Throughout its history, the race track has been used for a large variety of different racing categories including everything from motorbikes to open-wheel racers. However, due to the fact that the race track is considered somewhat unusual in its layout and because of tighter modern safety standards for racing, it’s unlikely that major race meetings in those categories will be held on the track again in the future. As a result, the race track has become the near-exclusive territory of close-bodied cars, specifically, Holdens and Fords, the V8s.

If you a bit of a rev head yourself or you’re just interested in checking out Mount Panorama and Bathurst itself, the Mount Panorama Circuit is open to the public as a public road on non-race days when it isn’t closed off due to an event. And if obviously, you want to check it out too, because you’re a rev head and love races, then obviously, go and check out the Bathurst 1000 in October or the Bathurst 12-hour event in February. So, I guess the next one coming is in October.

On your average day, cars can drive in both directions around this circuit for free. However, you will have to adhere to a snail-pace speed limit of 60 kilometers an hour unless you want to risk receiving a speeding fine from the local cops, the local police.

Anyway, guys, I hope you enjoy this episode. I hope you guys like cars as well. I’m sort of a rev head, I guess, kind of, I kind of like cars. I’m not obsessed, though. Though, I do love cars. I do love a good V8. Anyway, I hope you have an amazing weekend, guys, and I’ll see you soon. Catch ya!

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