Aww yeah! Today we're learning English with a hilarious episode of The Simpsons,
where the family travels down under to Australia
and I'm getting a bit of help from our newest Fluency Coach, a true blue Aussie, Ollie!
Aw yeah, thanks Ethan! I am so excited about today's lesson because the clips are so funny,
although not so accurate. So I'm going to help you understand Australian culture. We're highlighting
all the Australian references in green, and by the way if you're new here I highly recommend that you
subscribe so that three times per week we can help you to understand fast speaking natives.
Without getting lost, without missing the jokes and without subtitles, with our fun real life
lessons. Just look at what Rohit said they feel like with our lessons fluency is not far away.
So now let's jump into this science fitting lesson with The Simpsons.
You bet I'd say Australia.
The way that we Australians actually say it is Australia.
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Another funny joke is when the kid goes outside to check his neighbor's drain,
but what we actually see is a very open and deserted space.
This is a humorous take on the idea that Australia is a massive country with a very small population.
In fact if you visit Australia you will notice that the population is very concentrated in big
cities and small regional towns near the coast. Interestingly Australia is one of the countries
with the least population density. Now let's watch the next clip.
Like in the States, Australians also use the dollar. However they're not
the same currency. Today 1 USD is about 1.29 AUD.
In this clip and to add to the comedic effect of the portrayal of Australia, this character refers
to the Australian dollar as dollar-idoos. However you won't ever hear an Australian use this term.
Now let's listen again to how he pronounces some words in the following sentence:
He said our in a bit of a funny way, didn't he? Also did you notice the vow
in States? I'd say it like this: States. In this episode The Simpsons are trying to
make fun of the broad Australian accent by over emphasizing the vowel. This broad Australian
accent was very common in the 80s and 90s in TV shows and movies. However these days this accent
is not very common in standard American English. We pronounce these words as
our the States: "did you accept a six hour collect call from the States?"
Thanks Ethan. In my Australian accent I'd say this like:
"did you accept a six-hour collect call from the States?"
Now in the USA, we would say buddy or pal in a very similar way and
sometimes it could even be used to refer to someone who you do not consider a friend,
or even a person that you do not like, as we can see South Park make fun of in this clip.
By the way many learners overuse the word friend and that's exactly why we made this lesson to
give you some more common alternatives to make your English sound more natural.
I hope you've had a ton of fun and learned a lot about some American
and Australian cultural differences. Remember that every week we help you to
learn about culture, vocabulary, pronunciation and more! So if you haven't yet join our community of
millions of English learners, just like you who are making fluency
fun, just click the subscribe button and the bell down below.
And now it's time to go beyond the classroom and live your English! Aww yeahh!