Transcript of AE 1257 - Expression: Every Dog Has Its Day

G'day you mob, and welcome to Aussie English! I am your host, Pete, and my objective here is to teach you guys the English spoken Down Under. So whether you want to sound like a fair dinkum Aussie or you just want to understand what the flipping hell we're on about when we're having a yarn, you've come to the right place. So sit back, grab a cuppa and enjoy Aussie English. Let's go!

G'day, you guys! Welcome to this episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. I am your host, Pete, and I hope you guys are having a ripper of a day. Hope you're going well.

So a little announcement before we get into things. I am going to decommission the Aussie English Podcast application. So if you have this on Android or Apple, I would suggest getting an app like podcasts or Spotify or whatever other podcast app you like using. You should be able to find Aussie English on pretty much every single podcast app out there, if you can't, let me know. But yeah, I'm going to decommission this. There was just a few too many sort of issues going on with it, and people were getting confused, wanting to get courses and transcripts through the podcast app itself. But really, at the end of the day, it was just for playing the audio for the podcasts, obviously.

So yeah, unfortunately I'll be decommissioning that if you need, as I said, any other kind of podcast app, there's plenty of free options out there, so go check it out. I personally have an iPhone, so I use podcasts on that. And I also have Spotify. Both of those work fine. Yeah. And I think you could probably I'm not 100% sure, but I think you can probably listen to the podcast for free on Spotify. Spotify. Don't pay me anything. So I assume it's free anyway.

So yeah, that's happening. How's my week been? So what have we been up to this week? Sort of recovered from gastro. My son had gastro last week, which was a bit of fun I guess literally, shits and giggles. There's an expression for you, so a lot of fun, 'shits and giggles'. He spent a lot of time on the toilet, obviously poor little thing vomited in the car as well, so I had to spend a significant amount of.

I think it would have been a Wednesday last week, just cleaning the car out. So that was a lot of fun. A lot of fun. But yeah, poor little dude. He pulled through okay that day though, you know. By the end of the day, he was eating and drinking and everything was all good. And fortunately, my wife, myself and my daughter Joey dodged a bullet. We avoided getting gastro this time. So, yeah, knock on wood. Should be, well and truly in the past.

Now, I would expect that if I was going to get gastro from my son and that's gastroenteritis, I think for anyone who's wondering what I mean when I say gastro, it's where you get like a tummy bug and you end up vomiting and having diarrhoea and just feeling crap all around. But yeah, hopefully we've avoided that. Hopefully we have dodged that bullet.

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So let's dive into today's Q&A. So question and answer. Today's question comes from Sydney. Why do Australians and Americans say soccer when the rest of the world says football? So why do Aussies and Yankees, Americans, say soccer when everyone else says football?

So it's not just Aussies and Americans. Apparently it's also Irish and Kiwis so New Zealanders as well. And the primary reason is to distinguish their game of football from soccer, right. Because quite often, at least in our countries, we've got many different games that involve a ball and using your feet. Right. Kicking that ball. So in Australia we've got Australian rules football, rugby union, rugby league. And all of these can be referred to as football or footy. And so yeah, because they're more popular here in Australia, it would be weird to have to use different nouns to refer to those sports, but still be using football for soccer, if that makes sense.

So yeah, we use the American team soccer for your version of football, I guess. So hopefully that makes sense. But yeah, I guess it does get a little confusing. Like if I down here in Victoria, if I talk to anyone and they say footy, I'm going to assume they're talking about AFL, right? Australian Football League, Australian rules football. If I go to New South Wales and Queensland and someone says footy, I typically won't know if they're talking about Australian rules football or rugby league or union, right.

Because rugby tends to be more popular in New South Wales and Queensland than football is or footy, the Australian rules football AFL is in those places. So that's where a bit of confusion can come in. But yeah, usually if anyone says football I will never assume they're saying, they're talking about soccer.

However, ironically, if my wife says football with a Brazilian accent, obviously I'm going to assume she's talking about soccer, right? Because she could care less about Australian rules footy or rugby. But she loves soccer. So yeah, it's one of those things. It's interesting. It's kind of like context dependent on how the word is used, by whom it is used, their background. That allows me to then work out or at least assume, hopefully correctly, what they're talking about. So there's your answer.

So let's get into today's joke. Smack that bird, get it laughing and let's go. All right, so here's the joke. "Why don't blind people go skydiving more often?" Why don't blind people; so people who can't see, people with no vision. "Why don't blind people go skydiving?" Skydiving is where you jump out of a plane usually, hopefully with a parachute. And you are. Yeah. You get to dive out of the plane into the sky and then after what 30s to a minute of falling, you pull your your parachute out.

So "why don't blind people go skydiving?" "Because it scares the shit out of the dog!"

Hopefully, hopefully you get that right. The idea being that blind people, not all of them, but many blind people, use a guide dog. In Australia, you'll often see people walking around with a Labrador, you know, golden lab or a black lab, maybe even a chocolate Labrador, and they're using the dog to help them negotiate. You know, the outside environment, cross streets, go to shops, all that sort of stuff.

And so the joke here is obviously that if a blind person goes skydiving, they're going to take their dog with them, which is very unlikely. But you know, that's the joke. That's stupid. Anyway. Okay, so today's expression is "every dog has its day", "every dog has its day". Hopefully you see how the joke and that expression are connected. Right? Dogs.

All right. So we'll go through the words in the expression. We'll go through what the expression means, maybe where it comes from, some examples of how to use it, a pronunciation exercise, and then a little listening comprehension exercise at the end. So "every dog has its day".

The word 'every'. This is used before a singular noun to refer to all the individual members of a set, without exception. Right? So every single one of them. All of them. "The hotel assures every guest of personal attention", right? Every guest, every single one of them. "I ate every chocolate out of the box." Right. The box is now empty. "I ate every chocolate."

A 'dog'. This is a domesticated carnivorous mammal that typically has a long snout. Not always, though, an acute sense of smell, non-retractable claws, and a barking, howling, or whining voice. I love these definitions from Google. They're so descriptive. I think you're going to know what a dog is, right? It's probably one of the first words that you you learnt when learning English. Cat and dogs. "This puppy is my dog", right? "The dog chased the cat down the street." A 'dog'.

'Has'. This is from the verb 'to have', right. This is to possess something, to have two children. "I have two children." "She has a new car."

'It's'. This is the genderless possessive pronoun often used for non-human things. "Whose dog is that? And who is its owner?" Right. "Who is the person who owns that dog? Who is its owner?" "This is my new car. And this is its trailer." "A trailer that goes with the car. This is its trailer."

And then, a 'day'. Again, I'm going to assume you know what a day is. Each of the 24 hour periods, reckoned from one midnight to the next, into which a week, month or year is divided and corresponding to a rotation of the Earth on its axis. I love these definitions. Okay, I'm sure you're going to know what a day is, right? A 'day'. "I saw him a few days ago." "What day is it today?"

All right, so the expression 'every dog has its day'. This is used to say that everyone will be successful or lucky at some point in their life. It's an expression that is often used to encourage someone at a time when they're not necessarily doing very well. They're not extremely lucky. They're not succeeding at something at that point. Right. So you're using it to encourage them. So everyone's going to have good luck. Everyone's going to have success at some point in their lives.

And when I looked up the origin, I went over to EnglishClub.com, which says the proverb was first recorded in the first century by the Greek biographer Plutarch as "even a dog gets its revenge", or "even a dog gets his revenge". In 1539, Richard Taverner Taverner published it in English as "A Dog Hath a day", and in 1670 John Ray's A Collection of English Proverbs had it as "every dog has his day", and 'hath' here is the, I guess that's Middle English for 'have'.

And interestingly, the Richard Taverner version has dog spelt d o g g e back then. A 'dogge', it looks like a 'doggee' or 'a dogge hath a day'. So there's some interesting sort of archaic English for you. 'Hath'. You will not hear that, unless people may be quoting, you know, like the King James Bible or maybe some of these older stuff, things written in, you know, the 15 or 1600s.

Anyway, let's go through some examples of how to use this expression in everyday life in English. Okay. Example number one. So I used to play soccer. When I was at high school, I had to train multiple times a week with my team-mates. I'd usually have a game against a rival school on the weekend, so we'd all pile into the bus. We'd be driving up to Melbourne, usually to play against one of the schools up there. Every time I played a game, I wanted to kick at least one goal. You know, that was my goal, that was my target. That was what I wanted to do. That's how I defined success. It was if I kicked a goal.

But I often didn't kick a single goal and would feel a bit crummy, right, would feel a bit depressed. A bit down, a bit 'down in the dumps' after the game. But my coach would always reassure me that "every dog has its day". I may not have been lucky or successful that day, but I got to just keep training and eventually "every dog has its day". I'll kick one next time.

Example number two. Imagine you're out on the town with your mates. You know, looking to pick up. 'To pick up' is a cheeky little phrasal verb in English meaning to hook up with someone. This might be Australian slang. I'm not sure if Americans would use this, but if you pick up, if you go out and pick up, it's usually that you hook up with someone.

So you kind of have like a short romantic interaction with that person. So you're single, you're hoping to get lucky, hoping to meet someone nice and get a bit of action. That's another way of saying get some romantic. Yeah. Anything from kissing all the way down to sex, I guess, is to get a bit of action. So you go out with your friends, try to socialise and see what happens. But unfortunately for you, on that night all your mates end up picking up. They end up finding partners and hooking up with their partners. But you get Buckley's right, you get nothing. You find no one, you end up with no one. You end up home alone.

And the next day all your mates call you up and are just like, "You know what? Don't worry mate, every dog has its day." "You'll get your turn next week. You'll be lucky then. Every dog has its day."

Example number three. Maybe you take up a new hobby like gold detecting, you know, looking for treasure. So I was watching a doco recently on a guy who did this in the UK. He used a metal detector and would go out looking for artefacts, treasure, lost things in his local town. And then one day after, like 22 years of metal detecting, he found a huge stash of 55,000 Roman coins in a pot that was buried in a field.

And it was the largest ever coin stash found in the United Kingdom. So the proverb is true, "every dog has its day", right? He went out searching, metal detecting, and after 22 years of trying, eventually he was insanely lucky, insanely successful. He had his day. Every dog has its day.

So hopefully now guys, you understand the expression "every dog has its day". This is used to say that everyone will be successful or lucky at some point in their life, right? We use this to encourage people who may be down on their luck.

So as usual, let's go through a little pronunciation exercise. This is where you get a chance to speak out loud after me and work on your Australian pronunciation. Okay, so you're ready to go. Let's do it!

Every. Every dog. Every dog has. Every dog has its. Every dog has its day. Every dog has its day. Every dog has its day. Every dog has its day. Every dog has its day. I'd say every dog has its day. You'd say every dog has its day. He'd say, every dog has its day. She'd say every dog has its day. We'd say every dog has its day. They'd say every dog has its day. It'd say every dog has its day.

Great work. So what are some interesting aspects of pronunciation or connected speech that are happening here? With this expression? "Every dog has its day".

So I wonder if you noticed with the word 'every', 'every'. When I say this naturally, I actually only use two syllables when pronouncing this word right /evry/, /evry/ /evry/. Whereas it looks like there are three /e/ve/ry, /e/ve/ry. And you can use three if you really want. And people may do so when really trying to emphasise the word, right. "Everyone needs to sit down, every one!" Right. You would potentially do that, but you can just say "Ev(e)ry one needs to sit down. Ev(e)ryone!"

So the more natural way of pronouncing this word would be using two syllables. /Evry/, /evry/, /evry/ dog has its day.

Now let's have a listen to the word 'it's' right. If I pronounce this on its own, /its/ I'm using a vowel sound /I/ /Its/ /Its/ /I/ /I/ /I/.

But when I say it in the sentence, it gets reduced and becomes a schwa sound. Have a listen. /Evry dog hazəts day/. /Evry dog hazəts day/. /Evry dog hazəts day/. Right. So I pass over it really quickly. It's reduced. I don't clearly enunciate. I don't clearly say that /I/ vowel sound. I say an /ə/ schwa sound. /Evry dog hazəts day/. /əts/ /əts/ /əts/ /evry dog hazəts/ day, /hazəts day/.

And then lastly, when we were going through, 'you would say', 'I would say', 'he would say', and we were contracting these to I'd, you'd, he'd, she'd, we'd, they'd and it'd, what do you notice happening to the D sound at the end?

So I could say I'd, I'd, I'd, I'd, I'd, we can kind of hear a D sound there. Right. But because the word say comes after, 'I'd say', 'you'd say', 'he'd say'. And it starts with a consonant sound with an S sound, what happens to the D? /id say/, /youd say/ /heed say/, /sheed say/, /weed say/, /theyd say/ /itd say/. It gets muted.

So that happens quite often with consonant sounds, especially plosive ones like D and T and B and P and K and G. If there's a consonant sound that comes after them in a spoken phrase, we mute them. Okay, /id say/, /id say/ instead of /iD say/, because when you do that, it sounds like you're inserting a vowel sound and a syllable. And it would be, yeah, confusing to a native ear, a native speakers' ear.

Okay. So remember guys, if you want to learn how to sound more Australian, how to speak with freedom, with confidence and sound. Yeah, just like an Aussie. Be sure to check out my Australian pronunciation course. Go to the link. AussieEnglish.com/APC100 and you will save $100 when signing up to the course. So that's 33% off. Go check it out. Inside you'll learn how to use the International Phonetic Alphabet. This is kind of something that's crucial if you're really wanting to study on your own and level up your pronunciation fast, learning the IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet.

In section two, you will learn the different vowel sounds and consonant sounds of English. You'll master these with the tutorial videos and then the exercises that you can do over. You know, a few weeks you can work on the hardest sounds, or you can go through every single one. And then in section three you will go through more advanced aspects of pronunciation and spoken English connected speech, you know, consonant clusters, reductions in vowel sounds, everything like that. So again, go check that out at AussieEnglish.com.au/APC100

All right. So to end guys, to finish up the episode, we are doing a little listening comprehension exercise with a clip that comes from the Australian TV show Muster Dogs. Now my friend Alida will definitely be loving this show. She is from Brazil and she loves dogs and is a dog trainer. And I kind of found the show pretty cool too. So shout out to Alida if she's listening to this episode.

So the excerpt is: "The show follows five Kelpie puppies from the same litter on their journey to become muster dogs, as they are paired with graziers from the Red Earth of the Top End to the green pastures of regional Victoria." Okay, so a 'grazier' is someone who grazes, I guess, sheep or or cows and mustering. When a dog musters a group of animals, livestock like that, it's used to herd them, to control them. Right? That's what a muster dog is.

Okay, so the rules of the game I'm going to play a clip for you two times, and your goal is to listen and then write down what you hear being said. It's a great way to train your listening comprehension. And remember you'll be able to check your answer if you download today's free worksheet on the website. Just go to this episode's page and there'll be a little button that says download.

And if you have already joined the Premium Podcast membership, you can obviously check the answer in the transcript for the episode itself as well. So you're ready to go. Here's the first playthrough.

So I've grown up on cattle stations my entire life, which is a really good upbringing. And I'm glad that it's gone that way, because yeah, I was definitely meant to be doing this work and that's what I love.

How did you go? Did you get all of it? Time for the second playthrough.

So I've grown up on cattle stations my entire life, which is a really good upbringing. And I'm glad that it's gone that way, because yeah, I was definitely meant to be doing this work and that's what I love.

All right. That's it for me today guys. I hope you enjoy this episode. I hope you have an absolutely awesome weekend and I will chat to you next time. Tooroo!