Transcript of AE 1244 - Expression: Out of Left Field

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 flippin' 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? I am Pete and this is the Aussie English Podcast, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. I hope you guys are having a ripper of a weekend. It has been a bit of a rainy day here today. In fact, I got up this morning and it was sweltering. It was hot. I was up at like 7:30 getting the kids ready for day-care. And then when I walked out the door to put the kids in the car and drive them off to day-care, it was already 24°C, which is pretty warm. When it's that hot that early in the day. It is a pretty good sign that you are going to get above 30, 35 degrees later in the day, and I haven't summoned up the courage yet to go outside and check what we're up to. I am currently in my office and trying to keep cool.

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All right, so let's get into today's Q&A question and answer. And this one comes from Xiomara Montao. Hopefully I've said that somewhat correctly, but I'm not sure. The question is "How do I politely tell someone I'm waiting for their response? Can I say something like, I'm looking forward to it?" So, okay, I had a little bit of a think about this, and I came up with three phrases that you could potentially use. So a good one is "I'm looking forward to..", as you said in your example, but you can shorten this to just "Looking forward to.." And we can say things like "Looking forward to your reply", "Looking forward to your response", or even "Looking forward to hearing back from you."

You could also say things like "Looking forward to your feedback". I'm trying to think off the top of my head. Uh, "Looking forward to your 2 cents". "Looking forward to your opinion". I think you get the idea. Right? And then lastly, you could say something like, "I can't wait to hear from you." "Can't wait to hear back from you." "Can't wait to get your feedback", "..your opinion", "..your response", "..your reply". So obviously, if you are wanting to show the person in the email that you are waiting for them to reply to you directly, saying something like that and showing that you're waiting is a great way of doing that right. Saying something like "looking forward to hearing back from you" or "I'll await your response", that sort of thing. Okay, so yeah, we ended up having a lot more than three examples there.

All right, slap the bird guys, and let's get into today's joke. So today's joke is "Did you hear about the magic tractor?" Hmm? "Did you hear about the magic tractor?" "It turned into a field!"

Did you get it? "It turned into a field!" Okay, so the pun here. 'Turn into something'. 'Turn into something'. "Did you hear about the magic tractor?" "It 'turned' into a field!"

If you 'turn into something', you could be driving a vehicle of some kind. And you 'turn' the vehicle. You cause the vehicle to turn as to enter something else. So a street, a garage or a field, right? You could 'turn [your car] into the driveway' as you come home. You could 'turn into a street'. You could 'turn [your tractor] [off a road] into a field'.

But then we can also use 'turn into something' to mean 'transform into something'. Right? So, "The princess kissed the frog and he turned into a prince." Or "Jesus is said to have turned water into wine." Okay, so hopefully you get the joke there. "Did you hear about the magic tractor?" "It turned into a field!" Mmm! All right.

So hopefully you see how that's connected to today's expression 'Out of left field'. 'Out of left field'. Okay, let's go through the words in the expression.

'Out'. This is moving or appearing to move away from a particular place, especially one that is enclosed or hidden. Right. So you could come 'out' of wherever you're hiding. "I could come 'out' of my house." If I open the front door and walk 'out' of my house, I'm moving away from my house. I'm exiting my house. I'm coming 'out' of my house.

'Left'. 'Left' is the left part, side, or direction, of something? Right? The opposite to 'right', 'right' and 'left'. "Do you know your 'left' hand from your right hand?" "Did the tractor turn 'left' or right when it went into the field?"

And then lastly 'field'. A 'field' is an area of open land, especially one that is planted with crops or pasture, and it's often bounded with fences. So if you go to my grandparents farm, a lot of the fields that they have, or paddocks that they have, are surrounded with fences, right? The farmer has his sheep in the top field and there are fences around the field.

So, 'out of left field', if something 'comes out of left field', you can hear it as either 'out of left field' or "That was out of left field", or 'come out of left field', "That came out of left field."

This is to be completely unexpected, very unusual, very surprising, very strange. Right. "Whoa! That came out of left field!" And I looked up the expression and where it came from. Here. I looked up on Wikipedia. It says that "'Out of left field' is American slang, meaning unexpected, odd, strange. And the phrase came from baseball terminology referring to a play in which the ball is thrown from the area covered by the left fielder to either home plate or first base, surprising the runner." So I'm not much of a baseball nerd, so I'm not exactly sure what is being expressed there in terms of 'out of left field'. But yes, today, figuratively it means something that is very unexpected, unusual, strange, or surprising.

So let's go through three examples of how I would use this expression in everyday English. Example number one. Right. So imagine you're doing a PhD, a philosophy doctorate, right? At university you are at a conference giving a talk about your project, and you have to present all your findings to the crowd, to, you know, a thousand people in front of you. You show them what you've been working on, you show them your findings, everything like that. And then at the end of the presentation, which might go for 10 or 20 minutes, you have question time for a few minutes, right?

So you're hoping that you get some easy questions. Some, I'm trying to think there's another baseball one. I could use softball, right. I think is it softball? There's a, there's an expression there somewhere about something that's easy. Right. Some softball questions I think that's the expression I need to brush up on my baseball expressions.

So you're hoping to get some easy questions, but all of a sudden someone puts their hand up and says, "Hey, what's your birthday?" And you're just like, "Well, that was out of left field", right? "That was pretty random. Strange. Surprising. Unusual. Has nothing to do with what I've been talking about for the last 10 or 20 minutes in my physics PhD, it was totally 'out of left field'. It's in April, by the way. That's when my birthday is. Uh, next question!"

So example number two, you're hanging out with some mates one night at your house having a bit of a get together. Right. So you've got them coming over. They brought drinks, some food. Maybe you're having a barbie. You know, you're out on the deck, you've cooked up some meat, and then all of a sudden one of your friends is like, "Hey, before we start the film that we're going to watch tonight, can we have a chat about race cars?" And everyone there may be really surprised. They may think, well, that's pretty random. You know, none of us are into race cars, and we didn't know you were. Uh, so the fact that you said, "Hey, let's chat about race cars" kind of came 'out of left field', right? That topic is 'out of left field'. Why do you want to talk about race cars? That's odd. Strange. Unexpected. Unusual. Wow. That was 'out of left field'.

Example number three. Maybe you're a politician who's a bit of a right winger, right? Very conservative in your views and positions on things like migration, economy, taxes. One day, all of a sudden you do a massive flip, right? You do a back flip on your views and they become suddenly very progressive, right? So you suddenly take the opposite view.

You've done like a 180 a U-turn on all of this. So the news, the media, journalists might report on your sudden change from being very conservative to being very progressive and be like, "Well, that was random. That was unusual. That was out of left field. The fact that he changed from effectively one side of the political spectrum to the other came 'out of left field'. Very unexpected."

So hopefully now, guys, you understand the expression 'out of left field' or 'to come out of left field'. This is to be completely unexpected, often unusual, something that is very surprising or very strange. To be 'out of left field'.

So as usual guys, let's go through a little listen and repeat exercise. This is your chance to work on your Australian pronunciation. So I'm going to read out some words and phrases. Listen and repeat these out loud after me. You're ready? Let's go. Out. Out of. Out of left. Out of left field. Out of left field. Out of left field. Out of left field. Out of left field. I thought it was out of left field. You thought it was out of left field. He thought it was out of left field. She thought it was out of left field. We thought it was out of left field. They thought it was out of left field. It thought it was out of left field. Good work guys.

So let's talk a little bit about connected speech. 'Out' 'of' 'out of' how do you hear this being contracted when I say 'out of left field'? /outov/ /outov/ left field. So 'out' 'of', the T at the end of 'out', because there's a vowel after it at the start of the word 'of' becomes a T flap /outov/ /outov/. And the /v/ sound, it's a, it's there's one of those weird words. It ends in F, but it's actually a V sound. It's a voiced /v/ sound instead of a /f/ sound. /Out/ /of/, the V disappears. /outta/ /outta/. So it just becomes the- 'of' becomes just a /uh/, /outta/ /outta left field/ /outta left field/. I thought it was /outta left field/. You thought it was /outta left field/.

Some other interesting things happening here. /thought̬ ət/ /thought̬ ət/ So the vowel sound in the word 'it' is getting reduced to a schwa. 'It' and the T at the end of the word 'thought' is also becoming a T flap /thought̬ ət/ and the T at the end of the word 'it' is getting muted. /thought̬ ə(t) was/ /thought̬ ə(t) was/ /I thought̬ ə(t) was outta left field/ /I thought̬ ə(t) was outta left field/.

You'll also notice the auxiliary verb 'was here' is being reduced and also given a schwa /wəs/ instead of /was/. /I thought̬ ət wəs outta left field/ /I thought̬ ət wəs outta left field/ So there's a lot going on there in connected speech. And you'll also notice the stress on which words. Right? /I thought̬ ət wəs outta left field/ /I thought̬ ət wəs outta left field/ Right. So words like 'it' and 'was' and 'of' are getting reduced as we give them the schwa vowel sound. And the other words are the ones that are emphasised. /I thought̬ ət wəs outta left field/

So yeah, pay attention to rhythm so that you can sound a lot more natural when speaking English. And also the connected speech aspects there. How T's turn into T flaps or get muted. Okay, so if you want to learn more about Australian pronunciation guys, as I always say, check out my Australian pronunciation course. You'll learn the different sounds in Australian English. Vowels and consonants. You'll learn about connected speech. So when to mute T's, when they turn into T flaps, when assimilation occurs, where sound changes occur. Everything like that. You can go and check out this course at AussieEnglish.com.au/apc100. If you go to APC 100, you will save $100 when you sign up okay? AussieEnglish.com.au/apc100.

So to finish up guys, today we are going to play a little clip for you from a TV show called Total Control. In the show Total Control, "Alex Irving, an indigenous woman, gets media attention after her heroic action. Her life then changes when the Prime Minister recruits her as a senator." So the aim of the game here is that I'm going to play for you a little clip from this show. I'm going to play for twice, right? I'm going to play it for you twice. And your goal is going to be to write down what you think you hear being said. And remember, you can check your answer in today's free worksheet, which you can download on the website on the page for this episode, or if you're a premium podcast member, you can check the answer in the transcript. You're ready to go? Here's the first playthrough.

Great. We'll be standing by. Thank you. Radio interview 11 a.m. and you better put on some lippy, because we've got a photographer from the local paper coming around. You're going off, old girl.

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

Great. We'll be standing by. Thank you. Radio interview, 11 a.m.. And you better put on some lippy, because we've got a photographer from the local paper coming around. You're going off, old girl.

All right, well, that was a bit of a short one today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you have an amazing week and I will see you next time. Tooroo!