Hey, I spoke to Jeff on the phone this weekend.
I don't think he got wind of his surprise party.
Get wind?
How do you mean, get wind?
What, do you like, catch it and put it in a jar?
No, silly. I mean, he didn't learn about the party.
He didn't hear about it.
He didn't get wind of it.
Oh, right.
Well, why..
Were you worried he'd figure it out?
Well, sometimes I have a knack for letting these things slip, and yeah, I
wouldn't have wanted to rock the boat.
Rock the boat? Whose boat?
Why is it rocking?
We're going to have to make another expression video, aren't we?
G'day, you mob! How's it going?
Welcome to this episode of Aussie English.
Today we're going to be going through five advanced English expressions to make you sound much more
like a native speaker when speaking English.
Now, if it's your first time here, guys, my name is Pete and I am the host of Aussie English, a
YouTube channel and podcast designed at helping you sound much more Australian and
just level up your English in general.
So if your goal is to take your English to the next level, I've been helping people do that for
over half a decade now, so this is definitely the place for you.
Now, before we get started, don't forget to go down into the description today and grab the
worksheet that goes with today's lesson.
You'll be able to follow along, take notes, read the exercises and everything as we cover
them. And I'll also be able to send you all of the future worksheets so you'll never
miss another lesson.
Lastly, each of the expressions that we'll cover today, we've covered more in depth
on the Aussie English podcast, so if you want to check them out, you can do so in your own
time. All right, let's go.
Number one: 'to get wind of something'.
'To get wind of something'.
This is to learn about something, usually a secret or something that you shouldn't necessarily know
about, or to hear a rumour.
So, for example, the cops got wind of the criminals planning to
rob the bank. Somehow, Jeff got wind of his surprise birthday
party. I wonder who told him?
Expression number two: 'to have a knack for something'.
Now I have no idea what a 'knack' is.
A single knack.
Do you have any knacks?
But in the expression 'to have a knack for something', this means to have a talent for
something, to be gifted at a certain ability or skill or task, 'to have
a knack for it'. So, for example, "She has quite a knack for tennis."
She's great at tennis, awesome at it.
"She has a knack for it." Pete has a knack for getting himself into trouble.
It's true. Pete has a knack for getting himself into trouble.
Expression number three: 'over my dead
body'. 'Over my dead body'.
It's a bit morbid. We say this in English to emphasise that something will never happen,
or that we would never allow it to happen.
You're going to have to kill me, and step over my dead body, before that thing is going to
happen. So, for example: "Hey, Mr.
Smissen, can I marry your daughter?" "Over my dead body, mate
!" Over my dead body.
"Hey, Dad, can I borrow your Ferrari for the weekend?" "Hah
! Over my dead body, son!
Over my dead body!
You're going to have to kill me first, step over my body, and then you can have the car."
All right, guys, before we keep going, can you do me a tiny little favour and give that Like button
a little boop!
It'll boost this video in the algorithm on YouTube, and hopefully show it to more English learners
just like you. It really helps out small channels like mine.
Thank you. Expression number four: 'to pull your own weight'.
'To pull your own weight'.
This is to do your fair share when working in a group of people.
So, you're 'pulling your own weight'.
And I think the idea would be, say, if you were in a boat rowing, you need 'to pull your own
weight' in the boat.
Do your fair share, and not let everyone else pull your weight.
So, for example, "The new guy at work needs to learn to pull his own weight
." Or, "She just joined the rowing crew and she can definitely pull her own
weight." Expression number five: 'to rock the boat'.
'To rock the boat'.
This means to say or do something that will disturb an existing situation, or upset
people. 'To rock the boat'.
You can imagine that if you're sitting in a little boat out at sea, with a group of people in
there, and you suddenly start rocking it, they're probably going to be pretty upset.
So, for example, "Excuse me, mate, I didn't mean to rock the boat, but is that
your wife kissing that guy?" "Nah, don't worry, mate.
It's my mum." "Hey, wait.
What? Mum!?" Just kidding, guys.
Just kidding. Example number two, "I've started a new job and I'm doing whatever the hell I'm told.
I don't want to rock the boat."
So there you go, guys.
They are the five expressions.
Before we keep going, I'm going to show them on the screen and it's your chance to complete a
little exercise, pause the video, pick one of the expressions and write your own
example sentence using it in a comment below.
See you in a sec.
All right. Great job.
How did you go? Now, lastly, guys, this is the fun part of the lesson.
We're going to do a little speaking exercise in English, obviously.
So in the last episode, we focussed on the Spoken Contraction of the phrase
'would not have' and how it becomes 'wouldn't've'.
You'll be able to check this lesson out by clicking the link up above here.
Watch it after this video.
In today's lesson, we're going to follow this pattern of contracted English
exercises and we're going to contract the phrase 'did not
want to', which becomes 'didn't wanna'.
'Didn't wanna'.
And it has that Syllabic N sound that we covered in the last lesson.
'did'n wannuh'.
For example, "He didn't want to help." "He did'n wannuh help."
"He did'n wannuh help."
Okay, so I'm going to repeat five sentences using the expressions from today's lesson.
I'm going to say the first sentence uncontracted.
I'll repeat it, then contracted, and we'll go through each of these five expressions.
Let's go. "She did not want to get wind of
it." This is going to be good.
Are you ready for this?
"She did'n wannuh ge'wind'ovit." "She did'n wannuh ge'wind'ovit."
There's a lot of contractions in that sentence.
"She did'n wannuh ge'wind'ovit." "She did'n wannuh ge'wind'ovit."
"He did not want to have a knack for it."
He did not want to have a knack for it." "He didn'wannuh hav'a
knack forit." "He didn'wannuh hav'a knack forit."
"I did not want to say over my dead body."
"I didn'wannuh say over my dead body." "I
didn'wannuh say over my dead body."
"They did not want to pull their own weight."
"They didn'wannuh pull thei'rown weight." "They
didn'wannuh pull thei'rown weight." Why not?
"They didn'wannuh pull thei'rown weight." Don't forget that Linking R in there,
"thei'rown". "Thei'rown." "They didn'wannuh pull thei'rown
weight." "You did not want to rock the boat."
"You didn'wannuh rock the boat." "You didn'wannuh
rock the boat."
Great job, guys!
Now lastly, don't forget, if you want to level up your spoken English use of contractions like
this, and your pronunciation, check out both my spoken English course and my
Australian pronunciation course.
You can get access to them via the link in the description.
They will help you learn things like the Linking R that we went over in this episode,
the Muted T, Linking T, when we use T-flaps, and the Syllabic
N which we used in "did'n", "did'n".
And there's loads of stuff inside there.
Anyway, thanks for joining me and I'll see you in the next episode.