Transcript of AE 1252 - Expression: Out Of Your Depth

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 mob, how's it going? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. The lingo that we speak Down Under in Australia. So guys, I hope you're having an amazing weekend. I have just gotten back from dropping my daughter off at day-care, then dropping my wife off at work in Geelong and then driving all the way home back to Ocean Grove and dropping my son off at my mum's house for her, for him to spend the day with her, and then coming home and doing a few chores around the house and now doing this episode.

I tried to record this episode yesterday, but I only realised after finishing it that the entire audio file was sort of like corrupted. So here we are again. Well, here I am again. So be the first time you guys hear it.

All right, before we get into today's episode, guys, don't forget, if you want the transcripts to all the podcast episodes, be sure to sign up for the premium podcast at AussieEnglish.com.au/Podcast for a small monthly fee or annual fee.

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All right, let's get into today's Q&A question and answer. And this one comes from evgen_mcgr. I don't know if that's like McGregor, McGrew. So the question is, "Is it true that ciggies-" so that's the slang term for cigarettes in Australia. "Is it true that ciggies are so damn expensive in Melbourne?"

So cigarettes are expensive in Australia as a whole, right? On a whole, throughout the entire country. It's not just Melbourne. I don't think Melbourne is unique, because the reason that cigarettes are so expensive in Australia is the taxes that we put on tobacco in 2010. In fact, I've got an article here.

So, "Australia's tobacco taxes are among the highest in the world and it's about to get higher." This is from The Guardian. And I wanted to read out two little paragraphs here for you.

"According to data collected by the Cancer Council of Victoria, the cost of a pack of 25 or 30 cigarettes has increased from a few dollars in the early 1990s to well over $40 until 2010. The Australian government increased the tobacco excise in line with inflation. Tobacco taxes were raised by 25% in April 2010, increasing the cost by about $0.07 a cigarette, and the excise continued to rise by 12.5% every single year, so annually between 2013 and 2020, in addition to increases that match changes in average earnings."

So yes, long story short, in a nutshell, cigarettes are extremely expensive in Australia and by comparison. So I looked up a little graph here. A 20 pack of Marlboro cigarettes in Australia is $26. In the UK it's $15, France, it's 11, the US it's nine, the UAE it's six, Spain it's five. Five and a half dollars, South Korea it's three and a half dollars. And in Turkey it's one and a half dollars. So yes, cigarettes in Australia are incredibly, incredibly expensive. It's almost like what, probably 15, 16 times more expensive than they are in Turkey. So there you go.

All right. So slap the bird, guys, and let's get into today's joke. Okay, so today's joke is "Why did the hipster drown?" "Why did the hipster drown?" "Because he went ice skating before it was cool!"

Do you get it? All right, so a hipster. A hipster is a person who follows the latest trends and fashions in clothing and lifestyle, especially those regarded as being outside the cultural mainstream. Right? So they try and jump on all these trendy things and start doing it all before anyone else does.

When I was living in Melbourne, there were loads of hipsters and they would be wearing like flannelette shirts, you know, flannels or flannies and they would have big beards. If they were guys, obviously. They'd have interesting hats. They'd be into like really weird ways of making coffee, you know, perhaps like cold pressed coffee, all these other things, just because no one else was doing it. Right. We did it before. It was cool.

So the pun here is on the word 'cool' though. So 'cool' can be of or at a fairly low temperature, right? So if you go outside and it's raining it might be a bit cool outside. It's not freezing cold, but it's definitely not hot or warm. It's cool.

And we can also use cool to mean fashionably attractive or impressive, right? This new video game is very cool. She's probably the coolest kid at school. She's so cool. So that's the joke, right? Why did the hipster drown? He went ice skating before it was cool, right? So that before the ice was cool and frozen so that he could skate on it, and also before ice skating itself was a really cool thing to do.

Okay, so that's the joke. Okay, so today's expression, hopefully you'll see how this ties in to today's expression, right? A hipster drowning and the expression to be out of your depth, to be out of your depth. Okay, before we get into this expression and what it means, let's go through the different words in the expression.

So 'out'. 'Out' is the opposite of 'in'. To be, yeah. On the exterior of something, not within something. "I'm out here. I'm not in there." "The dog just came out of his kennel."

'Your'. Second person possessive pronoun. Right. "This is your dog that came out of his kennel." "It's not my dog, it's your dog."

'Depth.' This is the distance from the top or surface of something to the bottom of it. So "What's the depth of the swimming pool?" You know, they usually go from about, what, a metre to maybe two metres deep. "The mine was dug or drilled to a depth of one kilometre depth."

So if you're 'out of your depth' literally, this would be the idea that say, you've jumped into a liquid and you can't stand up, right? So you're 'out of your depth', you can't put your feet down on the bottom. You know, you can't stand up by putting your feet on the on the what's about to say, the surface, but the surface of the water surface of the ground below the water. And so, yeah, you are out of your depth.

But figuratively, we use this to mean that you are in a situation that is beyond your capabilities. You can't achieve that situation. You can't resolve it, you can't fix it. You can't complete it. Right? It is beyond your capabilities. It's outside of your abilities. You are 'out of your depth'.

And I think the origin is pretty obvious, right? The expression alludes to being in water so deep that you might sink or you might drown. And another expression that's very similar that you may have heard is 'in over your head'. And it's the same idea, right? Being in water that is over your head because you've sunk down, right? Because it's deep water and you are out of your depth in over your head, out of your depth. They both mean the same thing and can be used the same way, literally and figuratively.

All right. So let's go through three examples of how to use the expression 'out of your depth'. Out of your depth.

Okay, one. So imagine you've got a kid who gets into sport. You know, maybe when my son starts at primary school, he's going to really get into footy and soccer and slowly get better. And then when he's at high school I might think, Oh, you know, Noah's getting really good at soccer. He's getting really good at footy. One of these sports. Let's see if we take him to the state team tryouts or the national team tryouts and see if he gets on the team.

So if I do that, I take him to the tryouts right where he gets assessed to see if he's good enough to be on the team. Perhaps he gets demolished by the other kids, right? They run rings around him. They are clearly far and away better than my son, you know? So we're going to have to go back to the drawing board. We're going to have to go back and practice some more, try and improve over the coming years.

Because when we went to the tryouts, Noah was in over his head or he was out of his depth. Right? Everyone was much better than him. He was in a situation beyond his abilities. He couldn't achieve what he wanted to achieve, right? He was out of his depth. He was in over his head. He was out of his depth.

Example number two. Imagine that you decide to get a pet dog, right, which is sort of where I'm sort of at the cusp of getting a pet dog. I think in the next year or two. My kids and my wife keep asking for it, but I know that that's going to mean a lot of work because you're going to train your dog well, right? So you want to get a dog. You and your family go to the pound and you're looking for a nice, easy going dog like maybe a Labrador or a golden retriever.

You know something that's pretty chillax. Pretty relaxed, chilled out and easy to take care of. But instead the dog that your kids bond with is really hyped up. Psycho dog. You know, he seems really nice, but he's just off his face, right? He's just wooh! You know, way too energetic. He is, he seems crazy. So you kind of cave in to peer pressure and you say, All right kids, we'll get the dog you want to get. You take him home.

But quickly you realise you're out of your depth. You can't train the dog. He's not listening to you. You don't have the ability to train the dog properly. So that say he won't poo and wee inside so that he won't eat your shoes. He won't tear up the inside of your house. You're in over your head. You are out of your depth. So yeah, you might have to take him back and get a different dog.

Example number three. Imagine you've migrated to Australia but don't know how to swim. And this might be a bunch of you guys listening, you know, who've migrated here and don't necessarily have amazing swimming skills. Imagine that you go to a beach one day and see everyone else in the water having a great time, and you think, you know, what's the worst that can happen? I'm not a great swimmer, but it seems like it's fine.

Loads of people are having fun. I reckon I'll be. I'll be sweet, you know. She'll be right. She'll be apples. So you go for a bit of a dip. But you get washed out to sea in a rip. And you quickly realise that both literally and figuratively, you are in over your head. You are out of your depth. You know you can't swim very well. You're in deep water. You can't touch the bottom with your feet, you can't stand up.

So you're in a bit of strife. You're in a bit of trouble. You don't want to drown. So you raise your hand up and you wave to the lifeguards. You know, hopefully you're swimming on a beach where there's lifeguards and they come out on their jet skis and save you because you are out of your depth. You are in over your head. You are out of your depth.

So hopefully now, guys, you understand the expression to be out of your depth. This is to be in a situation that is beyond your abilities, right? To be in a situation that you can't fix, you can't resolve, you can't complete, right? It's beyond your capabilities.

So as usual, guys, let's go through a little pronunciation exercise. This is where I'll say some phrases and words for you to say out loud after me, and you can work on your Australian pronunciation. Okay, so are you ready to rock? Let's do it!

To. To be. To be out. To be out of. To be out of your. To be out of your depth. To be out of your depth. To be out of your depth. To be out of your depth. To be out of your depth. I'll be out of my depth. You'll be out of your depth. He'll be out of his depth. She'll be out of her depth. We'll be out of our depth. They'll be out of their depth. It'll be out of its depth.

Great work, guys. So there's some interesting stuff going on, right? /to be(y)out/ /to be(y)out/ /to be(y)out/. How are we linking the words 'be' and 'out' /to be(y)out/? We're using a yod /yuh/ sound.

It's called a yod in linguistic terms /yuh/ /yuh/ /be(y)out/. So we use different I guess they called semivowels or semi consonant sounds. Yeah. And were to join different vowel sounds in English. /be(y)out/ /be(y)out/. And in this case it's /yuh/ /be(y)out/ /to be(y)out/ /to be(y)out/.

Then what do you notice happen with 'out of', right? So 'out' ends with a hard T /ouT/, if we enunciate really clearly. 'Of' ends with a /v/ sound, a voiced /v/ sound /ouT ov/.

But when I say 'to be out of your depth', what do you notice happen to those words? /outta/ /outta/ /outta your depth/.

So the T at the end of 'out' turns into a T flap because it's followed by a vowel. /outta/ /outta/ and the V at the end of 'of' disappears completely. And we just use the schwa /uh/ because there is a consonant that comes after it. Right? Yeah. Well, semi consonant, semivowel sounds, more or less a consonant. Right. We treat it as such. /outta yuh/ /outta yuh/ /to be(y)outta your depth/ /to be(y)outta your depth/ /to be(y)outta your depth/.

And now the interesting thing you'll notice when I'm saying 'I'll be out of my depth", "you'll be out of your depth", 'he'll be out of his depth" and "she'll be out of her depth". And I think we'll also do it for "it'll be out of its depth". With "he'll" and "she'll", right. We'll use the possessive pronouns 'his' and 'her', and we'll use H deletion. We'll drop the H's.

And so the /v/ sound will appear, because when we drop the H's from 'his' and 'her', all of a sudden those words start with a vowel sound, right? /He'll be(y)out ov(h)is depth/. /She'll be(y)out ov(h)er depth/.

But if we had the H's there, we wouldn't use the sound. /He'll be out of his depth./ /She'll be out of her depth./ So it's all to do with whether a vowel or a consonant. Semi consonant kind of sound follows the sound at the end of 'of' as to whether we say it as /uh/ or /uv/.

Anyway, if you want to learn more all about Australian pronunciation, go and check out my Australian Pronunciation course at AussieEnglish.com.au/APC100. If you go to that link, you will save $100 when you sign up to the Australian Pronunciation course.

You'll learn all the different sounds in Australian English, and then you'll go through at the end. In section three, you'll go through all these advanced lessons where you will learn things like linking speech, connected speech, how we pronounce consonant clusters, the syllabic L and N, all these more advanced things to make you sound much more like an Australian and a native speaker when speaking English. So again, go to AussieEnglish.com.au/APC.

All right guys, now for the final section of today's episode. I'm going to play a clip for you. And the goal here is to write down what you hear being said. Right. It's a listening comprehension quiz or test. So this clip comes from a new Australian miniseries called Faraway Downs, which is actually a series that has been adapted from the movie Australia that included actors Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman from 2008.

So I think they've just kind of fleshed this movie out into a series that has many different episodes, obviously. So the excerpt is "An English aristocrat who inherits a sprawling ranch reluctantly packed with a stockmen in order to protect her new property from a takeover plot." A lot of our advanced vocab in there, that's pretty cool.

So the rules of the game. I'm going to play the clip for you two times, and your goal is to listen to it and then write down what you hear being said. Remember, you can check whether you got the answer right by downloading today's free worksheet via the web page for this episode. The link should be in the information. When you're listening to this podcast, you can download that at the bottom of the sheet. You'll see the answer.

And if you're a Premium Podcast Membership, you will also obviously have the answer in the transcript itself for you to be able to check. So anyway, are you ready to go? Here's the first playthrough.

King George tell me I gotta go walkabout. If I am man, I gotta go walkabout. Learn to be a man. Yeah. Listen. It's up to Missus Boss what you do, alright? Come on inside, boys. It's time for dinner. I'm coming.

All right. Good job. How'd you go? Did you get all of it? Time for the second playthrough.

King George tell me I gotta go walkabout. If I am man, I gotta go walkabout. Learn to be a man. Yeah. Listen. It's up to Missus Boss what you do, alright? Come on inside, boys. It's time for dinner. I'm coming.

Great work guys. Well, that's it from me. I hope you have an amazing weekend and I will chat to you next time. Catch ya!