Transcript of AE 1205 - Expression: Get Your Hopes Up

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? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English. The number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So guys, it is an absolute pleasure to have you here, to have me talking down your ear holes and hopefully teaching you a bit of Australian English, English in general, and also giving you a little bit of a cultural dose from Down Under.

But yeah, what have I been up to today? So I went for a bit of a cruise this morning slash arvo. I dropped my wife off at work. The kids are at Day-care, so I think, what's that old expression? 'When the cat's away, the mice will play.' So the kids being the cat, or cats, they're away. So yeah, I am the mouse and I am playing.

But yeah, so I dropped my wife off and then I went for a bit of a cruise, a drive, went to Bunnings, went to Target, went to some other stores and just did some shopping for other things that I want to have around the house.

And yeah, they did include plants. I did buy a couple of plants, but yeah, don't tell my wife, okay? Don't tell my wife.

Anyway, guys, it's great to have you here. I love recording these episodes for you. It's a beautiful day today. So I've got the sunlight coming in and hitting me in my, my office. I've got some plants around me, so I feel like I'm sort of in a bit of an indoor jungle. So, yeah!

Don't forget, guys, before we get into it, if you want the transcripts for these episodes, be sure to sign up for the Premium Podcast membership. Go to AussieEnglish.com.au/podcast. You'll find it on the website. Obviously it'll allow you to get all the bonus episodes that aren't published for free on the podcast. You'll get the full transcripts that are written out so you can read and listen, you can print them out, you can take notes.

They're the things that I sort of create to really help you learn new vocab, to improve your reading, everything like that. And you'll also get access to the Premium Podcast player on the website, or on your phone, or on your tablet so that you can again read and listen at the same time. That is the most effective way to improve your English, in terms of your, I guess it would be your passive English, right? Your understanding of English. Read and listen at the same time. Okay, So two birds, one stone, right? You're improving your listening and your reading simultaneously, at the same time, by doing a single task.

So two birds, one stone. So yeah, sign up to the premium podcast, AussieEnglish.com.au/podcast.

So let's get into today's Q and A, question and answer. This one comes from Renata. "What's your favourite English word and Portuguese word?" So, this one's a tough one, right? I was sitting there thinking for probably about ten minutes trying to work out. English word? What would be my favourite English word?

And there are many different reasons that you might have a preference for one word or another, right? So yeah. So I found, I don't know, I thought a little bit and I was like, "What's my favourite-sounding English word?" And I thought of the word 'kerfuffle', right? 'Kerfuffle'. This is 'a commotion or fuss, especially one caused by conflicting views'.

So, I don't know. If you've got someone that is competing with you to be the captain of the football team. There might be a bit of a 'kerfuffle', right? A bit of a commotion or fuss about that as you guys have conflicting views about who should be the leader, the captain of the team. Right. There's a 'kerfuffle' and it just sounds funny. Kerfuffle. Kerfuffle, kerfuffle.

And then in Portuguese. Em português, um, probably the word 'borboleta', right? 'Borboleta'. That is 'butterfly' in Portuguese. I think it's a B O R B O L E T A probably misspelled that, but yeah, 'borboleta'. And you might notice, if you're a Brazilian Portuguese speaker, that I try to at least speak with a North accent.

So my wife is from a state called Maranhão in the north, and specifically the city called São Luís. And they speak, they say these R's instead of Borboleta, right. Or Borboleta a bit more rhotic right kind of sound. They say it more in the throat like a kind of sound. Borboleta. It's kind of gentle. I don't know. It's nice.

Anyway, anyway, getting sidetracked. So slap the bird, guys, and let's get into today's joke! So today's joke is, "What do you call a factory that makes 'okay' products?" So a factory that just makes products that are 'Yeah, they're okay'. They're reasonable. 'Meh, they're all right.'.

"What do you call a factory that makes 'okay' products?" "A 'satisfactory'."

Oooh! Do you get it? Satisfactory' is a word that means 'fulfilling expectations or needs'. It's acceptable. Though not outstanding or perfect. So something 'satisfactory'. If you got a 'satisfactory' mark on an exam, it might be anywhere between 60 and, I don't know, 75%. Right? It's sort of like, 'Yeah, it's okay.' You know, it wasn't just a mere pass. You know, you didn't just get 50 or 51%. You did okay. But you could have done a lot better. So it was 'satisfactory'. So because it has the word 'factory' in it, which is, you know, 'a place that things are built, constructed, made'. And those products that that factory makes are just 'okay'. They're not amazing. They're not horrible. They're 'okay', the factory could be called a 'satis-factory'.

I'm sorry, guys. I hope these aren't painful. I hope you laugh as much as I do these dad jokes.

Anyway, let's get into the expression breakdown. Today's expression is 'to get your hopes up'. 'To get your hopes up' or 'to get someone's hopes up'.

So, you can do it to yourself. "Oh, I got my hopes up", but you can also do it to someone else. "I got his hopes up." So, we'll break down the words in the expression and then we'll go through the meaning of the expression. We'll talk about some examples of how I would use this in day-to-day life. We'll go through a pronunciation exercise. And then lastly, a little listening comprehension exercise and writing exercise at the end.

Okay. So, 'to get your hopes up', 'to get'. This can mean so many different things in English. I swear. There's probably like 20 different definitions for the verb, or the word, 'to get'. 'To get' it is a verb in this case, 'to get'.

Here, I believe it means 'to reach or cause to reach a specified state or condition'. So that would be like, "I went outside and I got sunburnt," so it's like I became sunburnt, that specified state or condition. The condition of being sunburnt. You could 'get sick', right? You become sick or you 'get tired'. "You 'get tired'".

You could probably 'get someone else tired' as well if you cause them to become tired. And that's how it would be used in this expression, right? "To get your hopes up", you're causing your hopes to be up. You are causing someone else's hopes to be up. 'To get' someone else's hopes to be up. So, 'to get, reach, or cause to reach a specified state or condition'.

'Your' God. We go through this every single episode. 'Your'. "This is 'your' lunch", 'your' wallet. It's the second person possessive pronoun.

'Hopes'. So, 'hopes' here is a, I guess it's the plural noun of the word 'hope', but we often use it. It could be immeasurable. I'm not sure. Like, "I've got a lot of 'hopes'." "I don't want to get his 'hopes' up."

Yeah, I'm not sure. It's kind of weird to think about 'hope' as plural. Right? "I have many 'hopes'." So, 'your hope'. 'Hope' is 'a feeling or a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen', right.

So, if you have a lot of 'hopes', I guess it would be that you 'desire many different things that you would like to happen'. Yeah. 'Hopes'. 'Hopes'. So it can be singular, can be plural. "He has a lot of 'hope'." "What are her 'hopes' and dreams?" You know, "What are the things that she 'hopes' for and dreams about?"

And lastly here, 'up'. So 'to get something up', we're turning 'get' into a phrasal verb, 'get up'. If you 'get something up', you're increasing that thing. You're elevating that thing, right? So, "Someone's temperature went up", "The price of fuel is going up."

I could literally 'get up', you know, to stand up. So, but the, the basic idea there is, is elevation, something being increased. 'Up'.

So if you 'get someone's hopes up' or you 'get your own hopes up', I'm sure you guys know what it means by now. This is 'to become enthusiastic about something that isn't necessarily guaranteed to happen', right? It may happen. It may not happen. You don't know, but you 'hope' it does happen. You're enthusiastic about that thing, right? You're feeling hopeful. So when you 'get your hopes up', you're expecting something good to happen. It's an emotional kind of state that you are in.

You're 'getting your hopes up', but you can also 'get someone else's hopes up'. You can cause someone else to be enthusiastic about something and hope that that thing takes place.

So let's go through three examples of how I would use this expression. My son at the moment is a perfect example. So some days he wants to get into his mother and father's good books, right? So he's on his best behaviour. He's trying to- 'get into someone's good books', that would be like, behave really well so that the other people are going to treat you better, right? They might give you something. You want to 'get into their good books'. They have a positive view of you as a person. "Oh, I want to get into his good books." So yeah, Noah might be running around the house, picking up his toys, looking for things to clean up.

He's using his manners. He's saying please and thank you. Maybe is asking for other things that he can do to help out around the house. And my wife and I, Kel and I might look at each other and be like, "Hmm, why is he on his best behaviour?" "Why is he trying to get into our good books?" "What does he want?" Well, he's a three year old child. He has very limited wants. They're often, you know, sleep, food and play and toys, gifts, presents. That's probably what he wants.

So we might turn to him and be like, "Noah, take a chill pill. Calm down. Don't get your hopes up, mate." "Look, we love that you are behaving yourself today. You're doing a great job taking care of your sister, doing the chores, being great, you know, awesome manners. But don't get your hopes up because we're not necessarily going to give you anything today". "We won't necessarily give you a treat or buy you some toys. Don't get your hopes up."

So he might get a little bummed out because he's 'gotten his hopes up' all day. And yeah, maybe he'll start to have a tantrum. A bit of a meltdown.

All right. Example number two, imagine you're, you've just, you know, reached your 20's and you're on the dating scene. I don't know why I always use dating and relationships as an example, but I think it's something that we can all relate to.

So you've jumped on Tinder or whatever the most common app is at the moment. You're matching with loads of people and you've met someone that you really like, right? So you're chatting heaps on the app, you're getting to know each other, you hit it off. And you decide, 'You know what? We're getting along like a house on fire. Let's go out on a date.'.

So you ask the person out, you organise a coffee somewhere. And when the date's finished, you know, maybe it's gone into the late evening. You know, you've had such a good time with this person on this date. It's the date that just didn't end. You know, you went out at 10 a.m. all of a sudden it's like 10 p.m. at night. You've had a great time. And your date with you might have their hopes up thinking 'I might be able to get him or her', whatever gender you are, 'back to my house and get some action!'

But you might be thinking, "Mate, don't get your hopes up! I'm going home. I'm wrecked. I'm going straight to bed. I'm going to hit the hay." "There's no Netflix and chill at this time." You know, "I'm not sort of a shag-on-the-first-date kind of a person", a lady, a man, whoever you are. "So, don't get your hopes up. I don't want to get your hopes up. I'm heading home."

Example number three, another good example from home. So my cat Peaches is always 'getting her hopes up' in the morning and in the early evening when it's time for her to be fed. So any time, anyone in the house, walks near the kitchen pantry. So that's where her food is, right? Her chows, her cat food, is in the pantry.

Any time any of us walk there, she's following us. She's meowing at us. She's rubbing up and down our legs. Sometimes she's even, like, biting our ankles. She's begging for food. So she's definitely 'getting her hopes up' every time someone goes near the pantry. Whether or not they even intend to feed her, whether or not they even open the pantry just because you've gone near it. She's losing her shit, right? She's she's like, "Oh, my God, I'm about to be fed!"

So yeah, I always try and avoid going to the kitchen around these times because I don't want to 'get her hopes up'. She'll eventually get fed, but she'll get fed on my clock, right on my schedule. When I want to feed her, not when I'm making myself a coffee. And it happens to be 4:30 in the afternoon and yeah, she's hungry. So, I hate when she 'gets her hopes up' and just won't leave me alone. But yeah, it ends up being one of those things where as a result, quite often she gets fed. So who'd wonder why she has that behaviour?

Well, yo, Peach, I come out of the office and speak of the devil, who's waiting here to be fed. Is that you? You're hungry. You know, I'm gonna have to include this on the podcast now, right? All right. Are you done?

So hopefully now, guys, you understand the expression 'to get your hopes up' or 'to get someone else's hopes up'. This is to feel hopeful whether or not something that you're hoping takes place will happen, right. So, to become enthusiastic about something that is not necessarily guaranteed to take place, to happen. 'To get your hopes up.'.

So as usual, guys, let's go through a little pronunciation exercise so that you can work on your Australian pronunciation. Okay. So read these words and phrases out after me.

If you need to, try and find somewhere away from other people. If you're, say, stuck in a small bus with loads of people around you, maybe just mouth the words, you know. Pretend like you're saying them, whether or not you're actually audibly pronouncing the words, okay. But if you can get somewhere where you can say them out loud. All right, here we go.

To. To get. To get your. To get your hopes. To get your hopes up. To get your hopes up. To get your hopes up. To get your hopes up. To get your hopes up. I don't want to get your hopes up. You don't want to get your hopes up. She doesn't want to get your hopes up. He doesn't want to get your hopes up. We don't want to get your hopes up. They don't want to get your hopes up. It doesn't want to get your hopes up.

All right, guys. So let's break down a little bit of pronunciation that's happening there, like the spoken English, the contractions, the changing in how we say these words.

So, 'to'. We use the /oo/ vowel sound when we're really emphasising that word 'to' and we're just saying it by itself 'to'. But when it's in a phrase, it'll get the schwa sound /tə/. So you'll hear /tə get/ /tə get/.

And what's happening to the T at the end of the word 'get' 'there'. I could say /to geT/ and really enunciate the T at the end of the word 'get' /T/, but I'll often mute it with a tongue in my mouth /tə ge(t). So it's almost like I'm going to say the T sound, but I just don't release my tongue and do the /T/. It's just, the tongue goes up and stops /tə ge(t)/ /tə ge(t)/.

And interestingly, when I say to 'get your', instead of muting that T in my mouth, with the tongue hitting the top of my mouth, I'm doing it in my throat. And I think we mentioned this in a previous episode recently where it was a similar sort of situation. You have a T with a certain vowel sound after a- sorry, vowel sound. A certain consonant sound after the T, that instead of muting it in the mouth, you mute it in the throat using the glottal stop.

So you'll hear /ge(t)/. And I'm using my throat, that kind of sound /tə ge(t)/ /ge(t)/ /tə ge(t) your hopes up/, /tə ge(t) your hopes up/ /tə ge(t) your hopes up/. /Tə ge(t) your hopes up/.

'Your' becomes unemphasised, de-emphasised. It gets a schwa sound. /yə/, /tə ge(t) yər hopes up/, /tə ge(t) yər hopes up/.

And then 'hopes' and 'up' links together with the S at the end of the word 'hopes', linking to the R sound at the start of the word 'Up'. /hopes◡up/ /hopes◡up/ /hopes◡up/ /tə ge(t) yər hopes◡up/.

Lastly, guys, when we go through those phrases, 'I don't want to get your hopes up', 'You don't want to get your hopes up'.

/don't wannuh/, /don't wannuh/. /doesn't wan(t)er/ /doesn't wan(t)er/ So 'want' 'to' becomes 'wanna' and you'll often hear the T at the end of 'don't'. And 'doesn't' get muted as well. /don't wannuh/ and I'm doing this in my mouth again. /don't wannuh/ /doesn't wannuh/. /doesn't wannuh/ /don't wannuh/ /doesn't wannuh/.

So there you go! Remember guys, if you want to improve your pronunciation, go and check out my Australian Pronunciation Course. You can get access to this at AussieEnglish.com.au/apc A P C for Australian Pronunciation Course A P C.

Inside, the first section takes you through the International Phonetic Alphabet. So, how to use those strange looking letters that you see in dictionaries, to understand how to pronounce words. The second section teaches you the pronunciation of all the different vowel sounds and consonant sounds in English.

And then the final section takes you through more advanced things in spoken English, like the muting of the T's that we just went over. Or the linking of 'hopes◡up'. You'll learn all that sort of stuff in the Australian Pronunciation Course so you can go and check that out at AussieEnglish.com.au/apc.

So today's clip guys! In the final section here, the little listening and writing comprehension section. The clip comes from a new TV show called Koala Man. The excerpt is "A family father lives a not so secret identity as the titular hero who possesses a burning passion to snuff out petty crime." So it's a bit of an interesting TV show! And it has some really big names in it.

Some really big names! Hugo Weaving is in it. I think Hugh Jackman is also in it. So yeah, it's really, really kind of interesting. It's a bit crass. There's a lot of swearing in it, but there's loads of different Aussie accents, so it's worth checking out if you're into that sort of stuff.

So the rules of the game guys, I'm going to play a clip for you two times and your goal is to listen to this clip and write down what you hear being said. You don't have to be perfect, but just give it a go. It's a good way of trying to train your ear and obviously work on your writing at the same time and focus on punctuation, everything like that.

Okay. And remember, you can check your answer in the free worksheet that you will be able to download via the podcast app. It'll be in the description. You can click the link and download the worksheet. It'll also be on the website.

And if you're a Premium Podcast member, you'll also obviously see the transcription of the phrase in the transcript for today's episode. So yeah, go and check it out. And yeah, if you get the worksheet, there's a space where you can actually do the writing exercise and then right below that at the bottom of the page you'll see the answer.

All right, so here's the first playthrough.

Thank you, Koala man, I suppose. We never could have solved this without you. Is that what you wanted to hear? And I never would have cracked it without Canteen Lady Vicky. She's a good'un. Treat her right.

Awesome work, mate. How did you go? Did you get it all? Time for the second playthrough.

Thank you, Koala man, I suppose. We never could have solved this without you. Is that what you wanted to hear? And I never would have cracked it without Canteen Lady Vicky. She's a good'un. Treat her right.

All right! Well, that's it for me today, guys. Thank you so much for joining me. I love having you guys here. I hope you're enjoying these episodes and I will chat to you soon. Tooroo!