Transcript of AE 343 – Live Class: Hospitality Expressions

We’re live. We’re live. Guys, how’s it going? How is it going? I hope you guys are having a good day! Today we’re going to be talking about hospitality. So this, this lesson is going to be all about hospitality and different phrases that we can use, expressions that we can use. How to greet people. I’m going to go through what to say to people when they come in, how to ask people questions. Low end versus high end hospitality joints. I’m going to talk about checking on customers, the questions that customers might ask you responses to these questions.

We’ll also talk about when customers finish eating or they’re leaving the place and then when paying. And then we’ll go through a few verbs that are really common in Australian English that are used quite a bit anyway. So that’s the basic outline. Give me a thumbs up. Give me a love heart if you can hear me okay, guys. I’m just going to quickly share the episode as well. So after you’ve given me a like, let me know where you guys are listening from today. Are you all in Australia? Are you overseas and what time is it? Whereabouts are you guys? Where are you? Where are you from? And if you feel like it, feel free to give the video a share as well as it will bump the the video up so that more people see it. So I’m going to quickly do that just so that it reaches a few more peeps.

Although every time that I share the video on my Facebook, I have my friends coming across, they come over to the, to the video and start saying silly things. So all right, given that a share. So where are you guys from? Where are you guys from and what time is it where you guys are? Cool? Let me know in a comment below. How are you going VanDad, thanks for joining me, man. Murray River. Oh, so on the New South Wales side or on the Victorian side do I? All right. Seems like everything’s going all right. VanDad’s up in Rockhampton in Queensland. So you guys are in Australia. That’s awesome. That’s awesome.

What about anyone from overseas here at the moment today? And is it a crazy hour or is it the morning, the Arvo. Is it the evening or is it like midnight? Something crazy like that or are you guys all all good? From Thailand? 4 p.m. just finished work. Nice one. Nice one. Mongolia. Norman. Awesome. 5 p.m.. Brilliant. All right. Anyway, before we start today, guys, I’ve got an announcement. So I guess, firstly, Lala, is the one who suggested that I do the hospitality stuff, so thank you, Lala, for the suggestion. I hope you enjoy this episode. And I had an announcement to to bring up with you guys, to mention to you guys, to ask you your opinion about. So and I’ve got it listed out here on the screen, so forgive me if my eyes switch from the video to the screen.

So I’m thinking about helping you guys with Phrasal verbs. I know that Phrasal verbs, are evil. Like a lot of you guys seem to hate phrasal verbs,. And think that they’re really annoying and one of the most frustrating parts of English to learn, you know. Give me a thumbs up if you think that phrasal verbs are a pain in the butt. But I’ve been thinking about how I can make that easier, how I can create a course for you guys to help you guys learn phrasal verbs. And initially, initially, I thought, I’ll just sit down and create an entire course, and then eventually when it’s completed, I’ll put it online for you guys to be able to purchase and then use from wherever in the world that you want to do it.

However, more recently I’ve, I’ve figured out, I thought that maybe it’s easier if I just stream the course live on Facebook once a week, twice a week, maybe two lessons a week maximum, two lessons a week max. I could stream that and have it free. The streamed version of the course for free. So I was thinking for phrasal verbs, how would I do this? I’m a lot more interested in talking about prepositions that, that come after phrasal verbs.

So I would do an episode on every single preposition, and then all the different meanings that that preposition can mean. The concepts around how we use it and how we think about it as a native speaker, so that you guys can actually learn to intuit how to create phrasal verbs. As opposed to just learning a list of phrasal verbs and trying to remember all of them off by heart. I would much prefer to teach you how to use them, and how to create them so that you learn the rules. And then you can just go out there and create phrasal verbs whenever you need to.

So the basic idea was that the first lesson would be introducing the different kinds of phrasal verbs. The ones you can separate, the ones you have to keep together. Then the next 15 to 16 lessons would be one preposition per lesson. One preposition. So I would do Up, one lesson and all the phrasal verbs that go with Up. I would talk about what Up can mean, you know, ‘to fill up’, ‘to speak up’, you know, to increase all the different ways that that preposition can be used, as well as expressions, that use the preposition Up and phrasal verbs. And then the next week would be Down, then On, then Off. And I would eventually go through all the different prepositions. So that would be the outline of the course. I would stream it on here guys.

That aspect would be free, but I would have a slideshow that I’ve created in PowerPoint, a slideshow that I would overlay on top of the audio so that you can see all the images. You can see the things moving on the screen that show you what the phrasal verb means or is doing, how it how it sort of describes that situation. On top of that, when you purchase the course, you would get the downloads. You get the video to download, you get an entire transcript of the entire lesson. So for the entire hour you would get it written out, word- verbatim, word by word, with every single, with every single phrasal verb defined with examples.

I was also thinking I can create, a Facebook private group for you guys where I can, I can set up automatic exercises for you to work on every single day that go with the content for that week. So that it really reinforces all of the phrasal verbs that you’ll be learning and all the prepositions you’ll be learning. So you’ll be able to do written exercises. You can do videos. I’d have video challenges every single day. The group would be for paying members. So that’s the basic idea, guys. Let me know what you think. If this is something that interests you and you would be interested in doing a phrasal verb course, probably over 2 or 3 months, so it would be an ongoing thing.

Give me a Yes in the comment. Just type the word Yes. You’d be interested so that I can get an idea of how many people would be keen on signing up for this course. And yeah, price wise at the moment I’m trying to work out how much it would cost, but I want to keep it well under $100. But we’ll see what happens. I have to try and work it all out. Anyway, comment Yes if you think it’s a good idea and it’s something that you would purchase that you think would really help other people. And if you don’t think it’s a good idea, write No and let me know why and how I could make it even better for you guys.

So that’s what I’m thinking right now. I would really love to create this course over the next three months. I could take on a group of you. We could all work together. I really want to help you guys learn phrasal verbs and come up with a method to teach you the concepts so that it’s very, very, very easy after the course and you no longer ever have to worry about freaking phrasal verbs ever again. Anyway, that’s the spiel. So that’s the basic idea. Three month course. And then after the phrasal verb one, we could do business English, we could do Aussie slang. And this helps. This will help me to keep doing what I’m doing.

And also it gives away free content for anyone who is unable to purchase the goods and support Aussie English as well. So I think it’s killing two birds with one stone. Guys, I can release the course on here, advertise, have it on Facebook and then all the bonus content would be paid. Let me know what you think. Again write Yes in the comment if you, if it’s something that you’d like. Anyway, let’s get into today’s content guys. Thanks for sticking around. I know that was a big intro.

So in hospitality, especially in Australia, most places will tend to be pretty casual. They’ll tend to be pretty friendly. And so with regards to greetings, I would go back and listen to all of the episodes that I’ve done on the podcast and that are on YouTube about how to greet someone. So there’s like how to greet someone like a native. That’s one of the videos there with 21 different ways. But typically I would say ‘G’day’, ‘hey’, ‘hi’, ‘hello’. That’s what I would say when greeting someone who just walked in the door at the restaurant. ‘G’day. How’s it going?’ ‘Hey’. ‘Hi’. ‘Hello’. And then yeah, obviously I would say phrases like, ‘how you going?’ ‘How are you going?’ Or ‘how’s it going?’ ‘How’s it going?’ That is form, uh, informal. That is incredibly informal, but it’s not rude. It’s just very friendly. It’s a very friendly way to greet people.

So if you’re working in a workplace, like a cafe or a restaurant that isn’t incredibly high end, using that kind of informal language is A-okay, unless they specify otherwise. So that’s what I would go off. G’day. Hey. Hi. Hello. How’s it going? How are you going?

If it’s a high end restaurant, if it’s a high end hotel, they might say that you can’t be that casual, that you can’t be that informal, and that you have to use more formal language. What kind of language would you use? You would probably use things like, how are you?, how do you do? You might do again, that’s a very weird kind of greeting to actually use. But a high end establishment, a high end restaurant, a high end hotel might ask you to use that kind of language, and they may ask you to use ‘sir’ and ‘madam’. ‘Sir’ and ‘Madam’. And then if you’re referring to someone and you know their surname, you might be asked to say Mister so and so, or Missus so and so.

So that’s the high end. The, the very sort of, I guess, good quality restaurants where they may ask you, they will specify those. So if you’re going for a job, if you’re looking for a job in Australia, don’t worry about being too informal. They will tell you if it’s not okay. And if they don’t, you can always just say, well, this is how I speak. You should have told me, but I’m happy now to do the, the informal stuff.

So they’re the greetings. G’day. Hey. Hi. Hello. And then typically. Hey, how’s it going? G’day. How’s it going? Hey, how ya going? How are you going? G’day, how are you going? Any of those sort of combinations. They’re the ones I’d learn.

What you’re likely to hear as soon as someone walks in. Whether it’s a hotel or a restaurant, you’re likely to hear, “We have a table booked” or that “We would like a table” because they don’t have one booked.

So if it’s ‘booked’, it means that prior to coming, they organised the table. They called up and they said, “We want to book a table for X amount of people.” Two people, three people, 100 people. The same with rooms in hotels. They’ll tend to either come in and say, “I’ve booked one”, “I’ve booked a room”, “I’ve booked a double”, meaning two beds or a double bed. “I’ve booked a single” meaning a single bed or just one bed. Or “I need to book one”. “I haven’t booked one, but I would like one.” “Do you have any available?”, too. They’ll use the word ‘available’ if they haven’t booked one ahead of time. So if they haven’t booked it before, they’ll come in and say, “Do you have any tables available?” “Do you have any rooms available? Because I would like to book one” or “I would like to sit down at one of these tables and have dinner.”

So when they walk in the door: Questions that you might ask. Let’s go through a list of questions that you might ask. So I’m imagining here, too, in my head, that I’m at the restaurant that I work at, someone shows up, my manager isn’t here. So I go up to the person and have to greet them and then seat them, take care of their needs. So I would say, “Hey, how’s it going?” Or “G’day, how you going?” “How are you guys? How are you going?” “How can I help you?” “How can I help you?”

You could also say, “What can I do for you?” “What can I do for you?” If someone’s come to purchase something, say it’s a cafe and it’s takeaway, you might say, “What can I get you?” “What can I get ya?” Or “What can I get you?” The more that you contract that, ‘get you’, ‘get you’. The more you contract that to /getcha/, the more informal that becomes.

Okay, so remember that with contractions, at least in Australian English, usually when we contract things, the more contracted it is, the more informal it is. So that’s just a word of warning. So, “Can I get you anything?” “Can I help you with anything?” “What can I get you?” You might also say, “What can I do for you?” “What can I do for you?”

You could say, “Would you guys like…?” and then whatever it is, a table, a room, some water, a menu. “Would you like…?” or “Would you guys like…?” So I would typically use ‘guys’. I add the, the noun ‘guys’ in there. Not because it’s men, not because it’s boys, but because there’s multiple people. And so Australians I think probably everywhere, they probably use it in America and Britain as well, but definitely in Australia. I use this all the time. If there’s a group of people, I make it plural by saying ‘you guys’, so that it’s obvious that I’m talking to a group and not one person.

This is the annoying thing in English, because we have the one pronoun ‘you’ for plural and singular. But if you want to pluralise it, I assume that’s a word- to pluralise, to make plural, I would say, ‘you guys’. “How are you guys going?” “G’day, guys.” “How’s it going, guys?” “How can I help you guys?” “What can I do for you guys?” “What can I get you guys?” “Would you guys like some water?” “Would you guys like a room?” “Would you guys like a table?” You might ask them where they would like this room or table. “Would you like a table upstairs?” “Would you like a table downstairs?” “Would you like one near the window?” “Would you like one over there?”

So practice there, too, that /wudja/ /wudja/ /wudja/ /wudja/ “Would you” /wudja/ “would you” /wudju/, /wudju like/ If they’re after a room, you might ask them, “Would you like a room on this floor? Number one?” “…Number 50?” “Would you like a room near the exit?” “Would you like a room with heating?” “…with any sorts of amenities?” So any kinds of features that you might offer.

“Would you like a room with two beds?” “…one bed?” “…a view of the ocean?” “Would you like”, “would you like”. So get used to using that, because that’s going to be used all the time in this kind of work in English, where you’re serving people.

You’re always going to be using, /wudja/ ‘would you’ as a polite way of asking, you know, “Can I do something for you?” or “Would you like this thing?” “Is this something you’d like?” ‘Would you?’.

And the same with ‘do you’ /dyoo/ or you might just say /ja/. “Do you want a room?” But again, ‘would you’ there is slightly less informal, slightly more formal. So I would probably use ‘would you’ instead of ‘do you’, but again you could use either. They’re not, they’re not going to offend that many people.

You could also say, “Can I get you something?” “Can I get you some water?” “Can I get you a menu?” “Can I get you anything else?” “Can I get you something else?” Any of that combination is fine. “Would you like something else?” “Can I get you something else?” “Can I get you something else?” So practice that pronunciation, guys.

Okay, so now you want to check on customers. So you’ve seated the customers at a table or you’ve given customers a room at the hotel. But you want to check on them. If they’re at a hotel, you might ring them up and just ask, “Is everything okay?” “How are you going?” And you could use this at the restaurant as well.

So you’re just seeing, “Are you okay?” “Is everything okay?” “How are you going?” “Would you like anything else?” “Can I do anything else for you?” “Would you like anything else?” “Can I do anything else for you?” “Can I get you anything else?” “Can I get you anything else?” “Can I get you something else?” You can use either one of those there. And “Would you like anything else? or “Would you like something else?”

I would also probably use to make this even more informal. I always confuse those two. If you want to make it informal, you want to be kind of just really friendly. I might say, “Are you guys doing okay?” “Are you guys doing okay?” And you can get rid of ‘are’. “You guys doing okay?” “Are you doing okay?” And if you remove ‘are’ from the front of those sentences, “Are you doing okay?” “Are you going okay?” “Are you all good?”

If you take ‘are’ away, you’ve got to inflect it. “You’re doing okay guys?” You have to do that. No no no no no. Like the, the very, I guess it’s the, it’s the inflection to make it obvious that it’s a question. Because if you just said, “You doing okay”, they would get confused. So you’re going to inflect it.

However, if you’ve got ‘are’ at the front of it, the word ‘are’ “Are you doing okay?”, that, that inversion makes it obvious that it’s a question. But yeah, that’s what I’d use to be a little friendlier. “Are you guys doing all right?” “How are you going?” “Are you all good?” And remember, “Are you all good” for one person? If there’s many people and it’s informal, you can say, “Are you guys all good?” “Are you guys doing okay?” “Are you guys going okay?” “How are you guys?”

So that’s what you can use when checking on customers. “Is there anything else I can get you?” “Would you like anything else?” “Can I get you something else?” “How are you going?” “Are you guys all right?” “Are you doing okay?” “Are you going okay?”

So question, questions that customers might ask you here. We’ll go through some of these. I get this all the time at the restaurant. So I’ll seat some customers and I’ll forget to put the menus down. And they might say, “Can we grab a menu?” “Can we get a menu?” “Do you have any menus?” “Can we have some menus?”

So that’s a rookie error. We might say that’s an error that beginners make, but sometimes it gets so busy I forget to put menus down. I might forget water and they might say, “Can I have some water?” ‘May I have some water?” “Do you have any water?” They might say that. So it’s the same in hotels if you forgot something, if something was missing, they’re the kinds of questions you’re going to hear. “Do you have any…?” “Can I have some…?” “Would you mind if I grabbed some…?” or “…got some…?” And then whatever the thing is.

Also, I tend to have this a lot in the restaurant. I’ll give them the menus and they’ll be reading them, and they get a bit overwhelmed because we have a lot of Spanish. Obviously it’s a Spanish restaurant, so they get a little overwhelmed and they’ll say, “Do you have any recommendations?” or “Can you recommend anything?” They might also say, “Do you have any suggestions?” Or “Can you suggest anything?” So this is where they’re not sure what to buy. And they’ll want your suggestions. They’ll want your recommendations.

So quite often I’ll say the things that I really like in this situation. You know, I’ll say “Go for the pork belly and the zucchini fritters. That stuff’s awesome.” As well as the lamb ribs and the patatas bravas fried potato. It’s awesome. That’s what I’d suggest.

That’s what I’d recommend. So, “Do you have any recommendations?” “Do you have any suggestions?” “Can/Could you suggest something?” “Can/Could you recommend something?” They might also say “Can/Could you give us some recommendations” or “…give us some suggestions.” So they’re the basic questions when asking for advice on food or drinks.

They might ask you “Where are the toilets?” Or “Where are your toilets?” “Where are the restrooms/the restroom?” “Where are the ladies?” When they say ‘ladies’, they’re talking about the women’s toilets, they might say, “Where are the gentlemen’s?” And that means the gentlemen’s toilets, the men’s toilets. And if you get very, very, I guess Australians who are incredibly informal, they might say, “Where’s the dunny?” “Where’s the loo?” Or “Where’s the john?” They might use that kind of language and they’re asking, ‘where’s the toilet’, the dunny, the loo, the john. They’re talking about the toilet, the toilet.

So again, as we went over last week, you might often hear questions starting with “Do you mind if I…?, /dyoomin’ ifi/. And “Would you mind if I…” “Do you mind if I…” “Would you mind if I…” “Do you mind if I…” “Would you mind if I…?” This is one remember that I recommend that you guys really learn. I suggest that you learn these phrases because any time you’re asking permission to do something or for something. “Can I do this..”, effectively? “Do you mind if I..” “Would you mind if I..”

You’re going to use it a lot and you’re going to hear it a lot in Australia. My God, you will hear this all the time. “Do you mind if I go and do..?” “Would you mind if I..?” “You mind if I..?” You’ll hear that everywhere from all Australians. So learn that. Learn that, really?” So you might hear people say “Do you mind if I get a beer?” They might say, “Do you mind if I grab a beer?”

And this is ‘grab’, this action of putting my hand around something and holding it ‘to grab’. That’s ‘to grab’. We use that as a bit of a slang terms for ‘to get’. And I’ll go over that at the end. But you’ll often hear that in Australia as well. “Do you mind if I grab a beer?” “Would you mind if I grab some food?” So you’ll hear those two questions.

You might also hear “Do you do takeaway?” And they might also refer to you, as in the whole restaurant, as “do ‘you guys’ do takeaway”. “Do you guys do takeaway?” “Do you guys do takeaway?” And they’re asking, “Can I take the food away?” If they’re already eating, they’re asking, can they put it in a box and take it home with them? Or they might come in and just ask, “Do you guys do takeaway?” “Do you guys do takeaway?” And it is, can I buy food here directly without sitting at a table and then just take that home? “Do you guys do takeaway?”

They might also say, “Can I get this to go?” As in, can I get this to go home? “Can I get this to go”, as in takeaway? “Can I get this takeaway?” “Can I get this in a doggy bag?” You might hear as well ‘in a doggy bag’? I think without looking this up, I think this refers to putting the food that you haven’t eaten in a bag that you would take home and give to your dog. So as in leftovers.

So they might also use that term, ‘a doggy bag’ tends to be anything; a container, a bag, whatever it is with the leftover food, that you can take home. So, “Can I get this in a doggy bag?” “Can I grab this in a doggy bag?” “Do you guys have a doggy bag that I can put the leftover food in and take home with me?” So responses to these questions okay, my moustache is a little bit itchy.

Responses. You’ll know all of these guys. “Yes, certainly.” “Yes, we certainly do.” “Yes, absolutely.” “Yes, of course.” “Yes. No worries.” And if you really want to be Australian, “No dramas.” “No dramas.”

If you want to say ‘no’, then you can say “No, we don’t. Unfortunately.” You might want to add, ‘unfortunately’ in there because it’s kind of like ‘I’m sorry we don’t’, though. You might just say, “Yeah, no, I’m sorry.” “We don’t. I’m sorry.” “No, sorry about that as well.” You might say ‘sorry about that’ as- well, recognising that it’s an inconvenience for the person. So, “Sorry about that. Yeah, we don’t do that, unfortunately.”

And you’ll also use things like “You’re welcome” “Cheers” “Ta” And yeah, they’re the kinds of responses that you can often use for questions. “You’re welcome” “Cheers” “Ta” “I’ll do that” “I’ll get that”. Any of those sorts of things.

So when customers finish at a restaurant, you can ask “Are you all done?” “Are you guys all done?” “Are you finished?” “Are you guys all finished?” If you want to make it informal, you can say, “Are you all finished, mate?” If you want to make it more formal, then you could say, “Are you all finished, sir?” Or “Are you all finished, madam”, or “Are you all finished?” Yeah, you could just say it as “Are you all finished?”

You could say “Shall I clear the plates?” And that’s to take the plates from the table away. Clean them. “Can I clear the plates?” “Could I clear the plates?” But this is a good use of ‘shall’, as in “Will I do this for you?” “Shall I do it?” “Shall I clear the plates?”

And then you might ask, “Would you like anything else?” “Would you like anything else to drink?” “Would you like anything else to eat?” You might hear people say, “Would you like any more savouries?” This is something that I use in the restaurant quite a bit to refer to any meal that is not dessert.

So anything that’s not sweet. As opposed to savoury, sweet. So savoury is the main sort of dishes that you buy before dessert. “Any more savouries, guys?” “Would you guys like any more savouries?” “Did you want any more savouries, guys?” So you can use that.

And then you might just say, “Can I get you dessert?” “Would you like to see the dessert menu?” “Would you like some dessert?” “Did you want some dessert?” So that’s what you would say or do when customers finish when paying.

So when customers are coming to you to pay, they might ask for the bill. Quite often I just get this signal of them writing in the air, and they’re just asking for the bill by doing that. I’ll bring the bill to them. They tend to say thank you. And then I’ll ask, did you want to, “Did you want to pay by card or cash?” So cash as in bank notes or coins. “Do you want to pay by cash?”

“Did you” – notice there that I say ‘did’ and ‘you’ as /didya/, /didya/ want to pay by cash or card? And card is obviously, you know, using the card to pay with the machine. So “Did you want to pay by cash?” “Did you want to pay by card?” “Did you want to pay with cash?” “Did you want to pay with card?” And you can also say “Did you want to pay on card?” I might say using the machine. There’s a tip option. Otherwise just hit the okay button to go through and enter your pin. So there’s a tip option.

You might ask them “Did you want to leave a tip?” Again up to you. You can reply “Thanks for the tip” if they do leave a tip and then yeah, you would say “Please enter your PIN and hit okay.” ‘Hit’ as in ‘press’. “Please enter your PIN and press Okay.” And ‘PIN’ there is ‘PIN number’. So the secret number for their bank account. “Did you want to enter your PIN there? Hit Okay.” And then after that I might say “Do you want a receipt with that?” “Did you want a receipt?” “Did you want a receipt with that?”, or “Did you want the receipt?” “Did you want the receipt with that?”

“Here’s your change.” You might say that as well. If they’ve paid with cash, if they’ve paid by cash, you might say, “Here’s your change.” And they might say to you, “Oh no, that’s a tip. You keep it.” “Keep the change. It’s a tip.” After that, you might just say, “Thanks, guys. Have a great day.” “Have a great night”, “have a great arvo”, “have a great evening”.

Or even just “Have a good one” and then “See you next time.” “See you next time.” “See you next time, guys!” “See you guys next time.”

So I guess that’s basically it guys. Hopefully that’s helped. Hopefully that that’s given you a bit of vocabulary and expressions that you guys can now use. If you get a job in a cafe, if you get a job in a restaurant, in any kind of hospitality position, whether it’s working in a hotel motel, yeah, I hope it all helps.

I’ll go through some of the verbs now that you’re likely to hear that are a bit slangy in Australian English. So these, these verbs tend to be, again, a bit informal, but you’re going to hear them all the time because we’re, we tend to be very informal. Australians don’t really like formal language. It tends to make people uncomfortable if you sort of elevate them by using ‘sir’ or ‘madam’ or very appropriate phrases.

And that’s why I guess I’m always saying use informal language because people, Australian culture is very friendly. Everyone’s your mate. Everyone wants you to initially treat them as a friend. They don’t want to be put up here. At least the vast majority of people I meet feel uncomfortable If you automatically put them up here and call them ‘sir’ or call them ‘madam’. If I do that at the restaurant quite often, the person will ask me not to do that.

So that might give you a bit of insight into what Australian culture is like, and working in these places. If they’re a friendly place, then quite often using sir or madam may make customers uncomfortable. But they’ll let you know. It’s, it’s nothing to worry about. It’s just that, yeah, there’s nothing wrong with calling someone ‘mate’ or saying ‘g’day’.

Anyway. So these verbs, the first one that I’ve got here is ‘to be after’, ‘to be after’. If you’re ‘after something’, it means that something that you want. “I want something” “I’m after something” “I desire something” “I’m after that thing”. I’m after it. Imagine ‘to be after’ as in to be chasing something. “I’m after it”. So the thing would pass someone first and you would pass after that thing because you’re pursuing it. “I’m after it”. I guess that’s where it comes from.

This you’ll hear all the time. So, for instance, if a customer walks in through the door and they say, um, “G’day, do you have any tables free?” “Do you have any free tables? We’d like a table.” I might say “Are you after one near the door?” “Are you after one upstairs?” “Are you after one for how many people?” “Are you after one for two people? For four people.” “Are you after one?” “Are you after one?” “Do you want one?” “Do you desire one?” “Is it what you would like?” They might say “Actually, yeah. We’re after one near the door.”

“We’re after a table for three people, and we’re after some drinks and just a little bit to eat.” “Just a little bite of food tonight. That’s all we’re after. That’s all we want. That’s all we’d like.” So that’s what you’ll hear ‘to be after’. You can also hear this contracted quite a bit. So instead of saying I am after something, I might say instead I’m saying rather I am just after something, meaning that I am only after something. You might just hear people say, “Oh, just after a table. Just a table for two.” “Just after a table for two.” “Just after some food.” “Just after a quick drink.” And, “That’s it. That’s all we’re after! Yeah, just after that.”

So they’ll get rid of the pronoun and the verb at the start there, guys, they contract it. And that happens quite often when it’s very, very obvious who it’s referring to when you say that, ‘just after’. No one in that conversation is going to be confused as to who that ‘just after’ is referring to, it’s referring to the person saying it.

So yeah, “Just after a table for two” instead of “I’m just after a table for two”, “Just after some food”, “Just after some wine” instead of “We’re just after some food.” “Just after some wine.” So you can just remove the pronoun and the verb there at the start. If it’s, if it’s referring to you, the speaker.

All right. The next verb is ‘to grab’. So we can use ‘to grab’, this action again guys. So if I ‘grab’ you it’s that I close my hand around something and I have a hold of you. “I ‘grabbed’ you”, I might ‘grab’ you by the jumper, I might ‘grab’ you by the hair. And “I ‘grab’ you by the arm” that, that is ‘to grab’. We use this all the time in informal language. We’ll use it everywhere. It won’t just be at restaurants, it will be everywhere.

So I might say to someone, “I might grab some food. You guys hungry?” “Did you want to come and grab some food with me? Because I feel like getting takeaway.” “I might go grab a kebab, a souvlaki.” “Did you want to grab some Chinese food?” And it just means do you want to get some, like, literally go to a place and pick it up with your hands. Bring it home. You’ve ‘grabbed’ it.

You might say, “I’m going to go to the shops to grab some milk.” “I’m going to go to the shops to grab some food.” “I’ll grab some bread”, “I’ll grab some meat”, ‘grab’, ‘grab’, ‘grab’. It just means ‘to get’, “I’ll get some food”, “I’ll get some meat”, “I’ll get some milk to grab”. That is a great one. I really recommend using it.

And I guess some phrases you might hear that I’ve got written down. “Can we grab a table for two?” “Can we grab a room for two?” “Mind if I grab a drink?” “Mind if I grab something to eat?” And there we used the verb ‘to mind’. Remember ‘to mind’ meaning “Does it bother you?” “Mind if I grab something to eat?” “Could I grab some extra sauce?” “Mind if I grab some extra sauce?”

And a slang term for sauce in Australia, quite often you might hear, ‘dead horse’, because it rhymes. “Do you mind if I grab some more dead horse?” Although you’re probably confused. Some people, who especially non Australians, if you say that. They’ll be like, ‘What? We don’t serve horse!’

“I’ll grab a beer and a steak.” As in I’ll get one, I’ll buy one. That’s what I’m going to grab. That’s what I’m going to get. So ‘to grab’, ‘to get’. Got it?

The next one is ‘to chuck’. So, ‘to chuck’ is this action. If I pick something up and I ‘chuck it’, it means that I throw it. I launch it into the air. I, yeah, pass it through the air to you, at you. Whatever. If I chuck it, it’s this action, ‘chuck’. So I use ‘chuck’. Australians tend to use ‘chuck’ to mean ‘to put’. So ‘to put’. If I have some cologne here, if I put that on the book here in front of the camera, I could say I’m ‘chucking’ it in front of the camera on the book.

So ‘chuck’ is like, I guess it’s to throw something somewhere. But the basic idea is it’s a slang term for ‘to put’, although ‘to put’ would be a lot more delicate. You do it a lot more gracefully, ‘to put’, ‘to chuck’.

So, for instance, when someone’s paying for their bill after the restaurant, they might say, “Ah, I might chuck it on the card”, meaning I’ll use my card to pay for things. I’ll put the bill for the food on the card. “I’ll chuck it on the card.” “Do you mind if I chuck it on the card?” “Would you mind if I chuck it on the card?” “Can I chuck it on the card?” “Could I chuck it on the card?” “I’m going to chuck it on the card.”

You might say, if you’re working in a hotel, “Could you chuck some more pillows in our room?” “Do you mind chucking a few more pillows in our room?” “Chuck some extra pillows on the bed.” So the same idea. ‘Chuck’ is a slang term for ‘to put’. Chuck. Chuck.

And then you might say, “Yeah. Could you chuck some extra sauce on our food?” “Could you put it on? Can you chuck it on?” So that’s ‘to chuck’.

The last verb, guys, before we get into Question Time. And remember, put all the questions in the comments below. The last verb here is ‘to mind’. So we went over this when we were talking about the phrases “Do you mind if I..?” “Would you mind if I..?” And Somi, who just came in to the live video, was hearing about this in the live lesson, or the private lesson that we did recently. “Do you mind if I ..?” “Would you mind if I..?”

So remember ‘to mind’ is to bother someone. If something bothers you, you ‘mind’ that thing happening. So you guys might say, “Pete, do you ‘mind’ if I ask you a question?” And it’s the same as asking me “Does it bother you if I ask you a question?” “Do you ‘mind’ if I ask you a question?” “Does it bother you if I ask you a question?”

So you’re going to hear this all the time. “Do you mind if I grab a table for two?” “Do you mind if we grab a room?” “Do you mind if I upgrade to a double room?” “Do you mind if we get a larger table?” “Do you mind if we get something to eat?” “Do you mind if we get some food?”

“Do you mind if we get another round of drinks?” “Another round of drinks” too, by the way, means a drink for every person. That’s ‘a round’, ‘a round’. So imagine that people are sitting in a circle and you’re putting the drinks around the circle. That’s a single, a round. “Do you mind if we grab another round?”

And you could say, “Would you mind if I grab a table for two?” “Would you mind if I chuck some extra sauce on the food?” “Would you mind if we get another round of drinks?”

And you can actually remove the ‘do you’ and the ‘would you’ and just say, “Mind if I ..?” or “Mind if we ..?” “Mind if I grab a table for two?” “Mind if I grab it?” “Mind if we upgrade to a double room?” “Mind if we upgrade?” “Mind if I get another round of drinks for everyone? Is that all good? Is that okay?”

So that’s it, guys. That’s it for today’s lesson. If you have questions, it’s Question Time. So it can be questions about anything that we went over today in this lesson. Put them down in the comments. It can be about anything with regards to English. You guys can ask me anything and everything. I’m here to help you guys with your English, so ask me anything that you would like.

But first I have a question here from Frankie and Frankie was asking Could you talk about ‘did you want..?’ The phrase seems to be used very often in hospitality, in the hospitality industry, instead of ‘do you want’, ‘did you want’. For example, ‘Did you want a glass of water?’ is the past tense used usually in more formal or polite situations? For example, ‘can’ versus ‘would’, ‘will’ versus, sorry ‘can’ versus ‘could’ and ‘will’ versus ‘would’.

I don’t know if it’s necessarily more polite. I think that it could be, it could potentially be. I think that if you use ‘would’, or ‘could’, instead of ‘do’, it definitely has a slightly more polite feel to it. So if you were to say, “Do you want some more water?”, you could say, “Would you like some more water?” or, yeah. “Could I get you some more water?” I don’t think anyone would really be that offended, though it might be- past wise, I guess we shift it into the past.

And what’s going on in my head here is, was it something that you already wanted? So the person, if you can see someone looking at you like ‘I’m after some food’, ‘I’m after some water’, then you know that in the past, by the time you get there, what they have, what they’ve been wanting, what they want, it’s in the past. And so that’s why I would walk up and say, “Did you want some more water, sir?” But I don’t think it’s more polite to say ‘did’ or ‘do’. I think it’s just a way that we would speak because it’s obvious that what they wanted see, I just used it their simple past. They wanted it. It’s in the past.

But yeah. “Would you like..?” definitely feels more polite because of “Would you like..?” The ‘like’ there. I think it’s the way we’re using the, the tense. ‘Would you like’, ‘would you like’, ‘would you like’. It just feels more polite to say that than ‘do you want’, ‘do you want’. Although neither of them is like really going to offend anyone or anything like that. So I hope that helps. Frankie!

Let me go through some more of these questions. So what have we got here? Danielle. Hey, Pete. Hi also from Emma. Hey, Dan and Em! “The coffee bag on the back. Where did you get it from?” Oh, the one of, uh. I’m going to work out my orientation. This one here, the coffee bag here. I actually have them all over my bed, so I’m actually quite cheap. And to show you my bed, guys, my bed is actually piano pallets, so I don’t know if you can see. These are, these. I’ve got the thing set on backwards.

These are pallets. So grand pianos were shipped to Australia on these pallets from Japan, and I turned them into my bed, so I’ve actually got them. Sorry, I can’t orientate this thing properly. I’ve got, under my bed here, pallets. So they’re all wooden pallets and they cost me nothing. So yeah, I got them made from pallets and I went to a coffee. When was it? Actually, it was a cheese and wine place in morning- on the Mornington Peninsula, and they roasted their beans. So I think that was why. I had all of these bags. They had them all there, rather.

And they were eight bucks. $8. They were $8 each. And so I just bought a whole bunch because I thought they were nice. So I can put them over the pallets, and I don’t have splinters going into my head at night or into the pillows. So, yeah, I would go anywhere that you can get coffee roasted by someone. If they’ve got a roaster there, they’ll have these sacks. You might be able to find them on Gumtree.com Gumtree is the website where people sell anything and everything. So if you want pallets like this, you’ll probably find them on Gumtree. If you want any of these kinds of sacks, you’ll probably also find them on Gumtree. But yeah, anywhere that roasts beans, coffee beans, will be getting them as these sacks full of the green coffee beans and then roasting them.

So, Felipe. “Hi, Pete. Could you please explain to us why do people respond with a ‘yes’ when we ask ‘do you mind if I..?’ meaning that they actually don’t mind?” I think they’re thinking in their head ‘Yes. It’s okay.’ And this happens all the time with this question. Actually, I’ve just thought of it. I would typically not respond to this one with just ‘yes’ or ‘no’, because it can confuse people. Because they don’t know if ‘yes, I mind’ or ‘yes, I don’t mind’ or ‘no, I mind’ or ‘no, I don’t mind’. So it’s weird because people often do respond to this question with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.

However, it’s not a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer that it needs. Because yeah, it, does it bother you or doesn’t bother you? I don’t know, people are stupid. I’m stupid. I make this mistake quite often. But, you would just have to ask if someone replies to “Do you mind if I grab a drink?” And they say “Yes”, and you’re like, “Uh, so you do mind. So I’m not allowed to grab a drink” or, “Yes, you don’t mind and I can get one.” So you would just have to ask. So, “Yes, I can get one?” “I can’t get one?” “So you do mind?” “You don’t mind?” but I think that’s the reason because it’s one of those weird verbs where it’s, the meaning is kind of inverted from the norm, right?

So, ‘Do you mind?’ We have to kind of invert it if we translate it into, ‘Does it bother you?’ And I think when people hear ‘do you mind?’, they’re thinking, ‘Does it bother you?’ And then they’re responding with ‘no’ or ‘yes’ as a way of responding to that question. So it’s- I don’t know, it’s conflated. The best thing is just ask, you know, ‘Do you mind if I do this?’ ‘Yes.’ And then be like, uh, ‘You do mind or you don’t mind?’ ‘You do mind or you don’t mind.’ So I would use that.

Also, I wouldn’t ever say “Don’t mind if I..” in a question like that. It would be more a statement. So, “Don’t mind if I do” would be like “I don’t mind if I do.” So it’s kind of like ‘I’m going to do this. Yes.’ So, someone might hand me a biscuit and I might be like, “Oh, don’t mind if I do!” So it’s yeah, it’s not a question kind of statement in the negative like that.

So any other questions guys? Rafa. “Hey Pete. How’s it going mate?” It’s going good, mate. How are you going? “G’day, mate. How are you guys are going? Do they smell like coffee?” The bags here? No, I actually wash these. I put them through the machine washer. Machine washer? The washing machine, that washes clothing so they don’t smell like coffee. “Would have given it to you for free.” Ah, I might have to harass you then. Dan, if I ever need some more.

Frankie. “We’ll be moving to Queensland from Hong Kong at the end of the year. Is there anything about Queenslanders that we need to know about?” The difficult thing with Queenslanders is that at least from the point of view of people from New South Wales, typically Sydney and Victoria are typically Melbourne. The further north you go in Queensland, the more racist people are going to be. That’s a stereotype. It’s not 100% true, but it is something that I have experienced. And I think it’s not so much a trait of Queensland, but it’s just that the majority of Queensland, once you get past Brisbane, tends to be, uh, small towns.

They don’t tend to have that many immigrants there. They’re not used to a lot of foreigners that aren’t, you know, Europeans going on tourist things. So if you go away from the coast where all the tourist attractions are, you’re going to meet people who- they’re not all racists, but they’re just not going to have a lot of experience with foreign people. So that’s the stereotype that Victorians tend to have and give Queenslanders a hard time for.

So that, and that they’re into rugby and no one likes rugby. So another thing we give them trouble for. But I think you’ll be fine. They’re pretty friendly and I imagine that if you’re going to Queensland you’re not going far north. But yeah, if you’re open and friendly, they tend to be open and friendly as well. So I think you’ll have a really good time there mate, especially if you’re in and around Brisbane. Brisbane’s a big city so you’ll be fine, but that tends to be the joke. Queenslanders will call Victorians ‘Mexicans’ because we’re south of the border, making a joke about America and Mexicans constantly trying to come into America across the border. They make that joke about Victoria because we’re down the bottom and we want their weather, we want their beautiful beaches.

And we just tend to call all Queenslanders racists. So that tends to be the rivalry that we have going on. But I think you’ll enjoy it, mate, especially the scenery and the weather. The weather’s going to be pretty much always 20s, 30s. It’s pretty much like this all year round. Whereas if you come to Melbourne, you’re going to have to get used to 40 degrees, 30 degrees in summer, and then in winter it’ll get down closer to ten degrees. I think today it’s about 14, 14 degrees. So you’re going to have amazing weather in Queensland, mate. So enjoy that side of things.

What else have we got here? Julia. “Hi, Pete. Could you please explain what’s the difference in the case of saying ‘to get’ or ‘to grab’?” So, for example, if I tell a customer “I will get you” and then something. I think you can use either. The basic thing there is that ‘get’ would be the standard way of saying it. So this would be formal, informal. This is just the verb that tends to be used everywhere. This would be used also probably in the US and the UK ubiquitously throughout the English speaking world. I’m not sure if they use ‘grab’ the same way that we do like this though. They’ll understand. And this is how I would speak to them if I was going to any of those places, I would say, “Do you mind if I grab..?” “I’ll grab you something.’

So it’s just. Yeah, it’s not even. It’s not even informal, really. Like, it wouldn’t offend anyone if someone said, “I’ll grab something for you.” They might get trained not to use it in very, very, very, very formal situations, but I would use them interchangeably. “Can I get you a drink?” “Can I grab you anything to drink?” “Can I get you some food?” “Can I grab you some food?” So I would use them interchangeably. At least understand. You could stick with one.

You can stay with ‘get’ and just always use ‘get’. But just be used to hearing ‘grab’, ‘grab’, ‘grab’, ‘grab’, ‘grab’ because you’re going to be talking to Australians and the Australians are going to be using ‘grab’, ‘grab’, ‘grab’ all the time. “Can I grab a table?” “Can I grab some food?” “Can I grab that takeaway?” “Can I ‘grab’.., ‘grab’, ‘grab’. So just get used to that. And same with ‘chuck’. ‘To chuck’ as in ‘to put’. Get used to hearing ‘chuck’. “Chuck it on the car.” “Chuck it on the card.” “Chuck it on the bill.” “Chuck it outside.” “Chuck it”, “chuck it”, “chuck it” just means ‘to put’. So I hope that helps.

What else. Any other questions guys? “What answers are possible to ‘ta’ and ‘cheers’. So ‘ta’ and ‘cheers’ are just another way of saying ‘thank you’, ‘ta’ and ‘cheers’. ‘Thank you’. Responses to it? You might just say ‘no worries’, “No worries. You’re welcome.” “No dramas. All good.” “My pleasure.” “You’re welcome.” Yeah, any of those would be fine. Or you might just say, “Yeah, it’s all good. No worries!” I’d probably just stick with ‘no worries’. “Yeah, no worries mate. All good.” “No dramas.” ‘Ta.’ ‘Cheers.’.

So Aiken asks, “Do you practice martial arts and if yes, which martial art?” I do? Brazilian jiu jitsu. I’m just trying to see if I have any of my gear hanging around. So, let’s see. So Brazilian jiu jitsu is where you wear a gi like this. And these are actually really robust. It’s really strong material. And it’s like judo. So you grab on to people and you throw them to the ground and then you apply a submission so you’ll choke someone. You’re not allowed to use your hand like this. We call that a rape choke. We don’t use that.

But you can put your arm around someone’s neck and you have to get them to tap so that they effectively get submitted and they say, ‘you win’. So, yeah, I do jiu jitsu. I really enjoy it. It requires a lot of thinking. It’s not really a martial art where you just bash someone by hitting or punching them. You grapple with them. There’s no punching, there’s no kicking. But you have to try and submit your opponent by using joint locks.

So, for instance, this is a wrist lock. If I get their wrist here and push it down and they tap, they’ll be like, ‘Ah, I’m out!’ That’s a submission. That’s a, yeah, that’s a tap. So yeah, martial arts is good fun. It’s a great way to stay healthy. It’s a great way to meet people. It’s something I’d recommend if you come to Australia. Obviously I recommend jiu jitsu, but if you’re interested in a physical kind of sport where you’re moving a lot and one where you can meet a lot of Australians as well as just other people, obviously martial arts are a great way of doing a class and meeting other people.

You can also do this by going to the gym and going to classes there. You could enrol in yoga classes. In dancing classes, it could be anything and everything. If you want to meet Australians, this is something that I really recommend people do is just sign up for any kind of class where there’s going to be 20 or 30 people and you’re going to have to interact with them. This is a great way of meeting people. You’ll almost always find at least two, three people you get along with. Well, you see on a regular basis, and you become good friends with. So if you move to Australia and you’re thinking, ‘Ah, how do I meet Aussies?’ ‘How do I meet Australians doing Australian things?’, sign up for some kind of sport or activity or club or group and just get involved.

Get amongst it. Mingle. Mingle with people. “It’s no more Aussies in the Gold Coast, mate. Don’t worry about racism”, says Willie. There’s no more Aussies. Good one, good one. “Can you please explain what does bun in the oven mean?” Oh, Sammy, you’re playing a game with me.

So ‘to have a bun in the oven’ is an expression, a nice expression that’s used for someone who’s pregnant. So you would imagine that if a woman is pregnant and she has a baby in her, she has a baby inside of her. The kind of slang terms or not slang terms, but the expression people will say is that she’s got ‘a bun’, which is a bread, a bit of a sweet bread that you have to put into an oven to cook. She’s ‘got a bun in the oven’, and her ‘oven’ is obviously her belly where she has the baby. She’s got ‘a bun in the oven’, so you can use that one. A more slangy version would be “she’s up the duff”. This one is not it’s not really rude. It’s just not a polite way of saying she’s pregnant or that she has a bun in the oven. That’s kind of a cute, cute one. But we could also say she’s ‘up the duff’. And so I would probably use that if I was you guys to make someone laugh as kind of ‘LOL, a joke’. “Oh, she up the duff?” Like, I wouldn’t do it seriously. If you did it? Seriously, someone might be like, ‘Whoa, okay.’ But yeah, up the duff. And to have a bun in the oven.

Any other questions? So Hardaway wants to know “The expression ‘it’s fine’. Is it the same as ‘so-so’?” No. ‘It’s fine’ means ‘it’s okay’. ‘So-so’ would be this idea of ‘yeah, so-so’. So like, kind of not good. Not okay. Not bad. So, ‘so-so’. “It’s fine”. I would use to mean ‘it’s good’. It’s all good. It’s okay, it’s fine.

Sammy’s got another question. What does that- So what does that ‘is my pet hate’ mean? Ah, okay. What does it mean if you say something ‘Is my pet hate’ this one? I don’t know where it came from, but it’s commonly used everywhere. America, Britain, Australia. If something is your ‘pet hate’, this is kind of like something you really dislike and that it’s like a common thing.

So if your husband. If Ali, Sammy, Sammy. If Ali was always eating really loudly next to you. So you’re sitting on the couch trying to watch a movie and he’s sitting next to you. (making mouth sounds) You know, “What’s up?” you could say, “God damn it, people eating out loud like that is my pet hate.” So it’s something that you really dislike. It’s something you really, really, hate. “People eating popcorn in cinemas is a pet hate of mine.” I really dislike that because everything tends to be quiet. And then you just hear num num num crunch, crunch, crunch. That’s my pet hate.

Someone could hate motorcycles and that would be their ‘pet hate’. So, I’m not sure why it’s ‘pet’. I guess you could imagine that it’s something you carry with you everywhere, like a small animal that you foster. I don’t know that you take care of, but that’s the thing that you kind of hate. And it tends to be a- you wouldn’t say this about like, I don’t know, if you were Hitler and you hated Jews, you wouldn’t say, ‘Jews are my pet hate’.

It’s kind of a small cutesy thing that annoys you. This thing annoys me. If you really, really hated someone, something a race of people you wouldn’t use pet hate. You would- I don’t even know what you would use. But ‘pet hate’ is kind of something cute, something small. That’s just annoying. It’s irritating. So yeah, I hope Ali doesn’t eat too loudly next to you when you guys are hanging out watching TV.

Leandro, “Could you recommend me any Australian TV shows?” Oh, man. Leandro, have you got a pen and paper? So first and foremost, one that I really recommend is Round The Twist. Round The Twist ’round’, as in something that’s round. And then ‘twist’ like ‘twisting’ something. Round The Twist. Three words YouTube it. Put it on YouTube. The first season is free on there.

I think it’s like five hours long. This was filmed down the Great Ocean Road and it’s just brilliant. The stories. I think each episode is about 30 minutes long and the stories are, I think they’re based on an author that was Australian called Paul Jennings, and he wrote all these children’s books for young adults that had like kind of supernatural crazy stories. So Round the Twist is one that I really recommend.

I’m sure Sammy and Ali at the moment who are watching this would probably recommend Packed To The Rafters. That’s another one that I’ve heard a few of my students watching recently, Packed To The Rafters. So the verb ‘pack’, Packed To The Rafters. That’s another one.

Underbelly. Underbelly. This is one word underbelly. That’s a really good TV show, and it’s sort of based on true stories about gangs and crime that happened in cities around Australia throughout history. So you’ve got things like the early 2000 in Lygon Street here in Melbourne. That’s the first season. I think there was one based in Sydney, Perth. So they’re really cool because it’s a bit of history and it’s about Australia. So those are three pretty good shows.

Seachange is another one. That’s one word, Seachange. Sea like the ocean, Seachange, that’s a really good TV show as well. It’s kind of a comedy, bit of a romantic comedy. Again, this one was filmed down near the Great Ocean Road, near Barwon Heads and Ocean Grove, where I grew up. So that’s along the coastline. So anytime I see that TV show, I just think of where I grew up. So I hope they’re good suggestions.

Aside from that, I don’t know. I don’t really watch much. A lot of the TV I watch, unfortunately, is from America at the moment, but hopefully those four TV shows are good. What do they say? Underbelly, Round The Twist, Packed to the Rafters and Seachange. Give them a go and let me know how you go, mate. Send me a message if you enjoy any of them. But the first season of Round The Twist is on YouTube. It’s free. You can watch it. I think it has ads through it, but go and watch it. There’s like five hours of Australian TV show on YouTube free.

Willy asks, “Could you explain the meaning of reckon and when do you use it properly?” So ‘to reckon’ means to kind of think. ‘Think’ can be used in multiple ways. So you might ask someone “What do you think about this situation?” and in order to say the same thing with ‘reckon’, you would just say, “What do you reckon about this situation?”

You might just say, “What do you reckon?” “What do you reckon?” “What do you think?” I think I wouldn’t use this as much when I’m thinking about something. So if I had in my head right now I’m thinking about how to explain this, I would never say “I’m reckoning about how to explain this.”

Never. So if the thought is ongoing in your head, you just use ‘think’. You don’t use ‘reckon’. If someone’s asking your opinion on something though, “What do you think of Alice?” Someone might say, “What do you reckon about Alice?” “What do you think of going to the beach today?” “What do you reckon about going to the beach today?”

So, ‘reckon about’, ‘think of’. You could use think about as well. But that’s where I would use it. “What do you reckon?” “What do you think?” It’s me asking you. “What is your opinion?” Not ‘what are you thinking?’ As in what’s going on in your head? It’s “What do you think?” “What is your opinion?” “What are your thoughts on a certain thing?”

You can also use this when you agree with someone. So if someone says, “Oh man, it’s so hot today”, you might hear people say, “Yeah, I reckon” or just “Yeah, reckon.” And that means like, “Yeah, I think so.” But you would never say “I think so”. It would more be like “Yeah I agree”. So you can use ‘reckon’ in that sense as well. That’s quite slangy in Australia. ‘reckon’ “Yeah, reckon” so that’s in agreement.

So you can use ‘reckon’ if you’re asking someone what they think. What’s their opinion. Tell me what you reckon and you can ask it if you’re sorry.You can say it if you’re agreeing with someone about a fact like that. “Yeah, reckon. Far out! It’s hot today.” “Yeah, reckon!” So I hope that helps.

What else have we got here? “Can you explain the meaning of reckon?” You just asked that, mate. Okay. And Vandad asks ‘pet peeve’. That’s the same as ‘pet hate’. “Eating allowed is my pet peeve. It’s my pet hate.” Both of those are exactly the same.

Round The Twist. Yep, you spelled that right. Seachange doesn’t have an S on the end. Seachange. So it’s like singular. Sammy agrees Packed To The Rafters is really good. And there’s it’s, she says the majority of it is conversations with just slang words. So, give that a go.

All right. Looks like we went through all the questions there, guys. I’m going to redo the announcement that I did at the start, because my assumption is that everyone watching now probably wasn’t here at the beginning. So at the start of today’s lesson, I announced that I’m thinking about doing a phrasal verb course, and that I’m thinking about streaming it live on Facebook for these lessons.

So the idea would be to stream 1 or 2 lessons per week for the for the phrasal verb course. And these videos would be free. They’d be like this one where you would just see me talking. But then for those who want to sign up and purchase the course and all the extra content, I would take these videos and the audio from these videos and overlay them with the slideshow that I see on my screen here with the explanation of all these different phrasal verbs.

So the basic idea here would be to have a first lesson introducing the different kinds of phrasal verbs, separable ones, ones that you have to have together, and how to use them, and why we use them. And then I would have about 15 or 16 different lessons covering each preposition. So my idea here is to teach you phrasal verbs from the point of view of prepositions, and not from the point of view of the verb.

So I would go through each preposition ‘in’ ‘on’ ‘at’ ‘up’ and ‘down’, and then talk about the different verbs and how to how to create phrasal verbs, so to teach you these concepts. So on top of that, there’d be about 20 lessons.

I would have a Q&A session after each lesson where you could directly ask me questions. I would have a private Facebook group with daily activities for that week’s content. So if we were studying the phrasal verbs that go with over the preposition over, there would be daily challenges to create videos, to write, to practice it, and to chat with me. And everyone else who’d signed up or enrolled in that course, you’d be able to download the slide show, the video, the combination of the slide show and the video. A complete written transcript for the entire episode. And then you would have every single one of those phrasal verbs used in the episode defined with example sentences.

So I really want to create a course for you guys that I can stream online, live, and then create all the bonus content for people who want to purchase it. But to teach you how to think about phrasal verbs from a different perspective, not a list of verbs that you need to remember, but more the prepositions. What they represent in space and time as an English speaker and how we’re thinking. And then you’ll be able to create these phrasal verbs without thinking after the course.

So the course would run hopefully for between 2 and 3 months with 1 or 2 lessons per week, and you would stay in contact with me in the group there, you’d get all that downloadable content and I want to keep it under $100. So I’m going to do my best to keep it cheap because it’ll be about 20 hours worth of content. But let me know what you think guys. Put a comment below with yes if it’s something that you’re interested in, whether you’re watching this on YouTube, whether you’re watching this on Facebook, whether you’re watching or listening to this as the podcast. And yeah, if you’re if you’re really, really interested, put a Yes if you think that you’re not interested right now, but I could change it, put a no, and then explain to me what else I could include to help you guys learn phrasal verbs.

Because I really want to do this, and I want to do it from an Australian perspective. So I might put slang words and other things in there that are related to Australia. Anyway, I would love to know your 2 cents. I want to know your opinion. I want to know what you reckon. So please let me know if it’s something that you would like, if it’s something that you would purchase and get a lot out of, put a yes below in the comment. And I guess, without any further adieu, do let’s just finish the episode up. I’ve been keeping you guys for too long anyway.

Thank you so much guys. Hopefully the phrasal verb course thing will start soon. If it starts, I’m going to hopefully chat to a few of you about it. Other than that, I’ll see you in class next week, guys, so let’s leave it there. Peace out and thanks as usual. See ya. G’day, guys. Thanks for watching the video. Remember, if you want to support the channel financially, you can do so via my Patreon page which is linked in the description below. If you can’t afford to support the channel financially, you can still help by spreading the word and sharing the videos. Thanks so much guys! Stay awesome! All the best!