Transcript of AE 1198 - Expression: Touch-and-Go

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. I am your host, Pete. I hope you guys are having an amazing weekend whilst listening to this podcast and levelling up your English, so I guess you could be listening to this at any point in time in the future. But it's released on a Sunday. So if you're listening to this on the day that it's released, I hope you're enjoying it. Mate, welcome to the episode.

So in today's episode we're going to cover the expression "touch-and-go". Don't forget, if you want access to the premium transcripts and the premium player and all the other bonuses that come with the premium podcast membership, you can get access to this at www.AussieEnglish.com.au/podcast.

Now guys, what have you been up to this week? It's been a bit of a crazy week for me, a bit of a lazy week, relaxing week. I've had a few things to do. It was a busy day yesterday with the kids, but today has been a nice little day where I actually sold a few plants.

So, my little side hustle with my indoor plant business is starting to pick up, which is cool. And yeah, it's a nice break from family and Aussie English to sort of have another hobby on the side. And I'd love to know what your hobbies are, guys! You know, if you've got hobbies that you're working on or that you're, you know, getting involved in when you're not working or not with family or whatever it is, definitely let me know if we chat on social media, or send me an email. You know, tell me about what you're up to. I always love chatting with you guys.

Now, let's get into the question for today. This is an interesting one. And I hadn't actually- I didn't know the answer to this. I had to look it up. So this one comes from EVGK on Instagram. "What is Woolworths mean?" What does Woolworths mean?

So Woolworths, for anyone who doesn't know, is also known as Woollies. That's the Aussie slang term for it. This is a supermarket chain in Australia, or Woolworths. And it's also, as it happens, a supermarket chain in the US. And it was one there in the US before it was in Australia, as you're about to find out.

So, I did a bit of digging. I went online and was like, 'Yeah, why do we call this Woolworths?' My assumption was that it was someone's surname, right? Woolworth or something, because there are surnames in English that you'll hear ending with 'worth' sometimes, is English surnames.

So anyway, Wikipedia had the following to say. "Woolworths in Australia opened its first store, the Woolworths Stupendous Bargain Basement in the old Imperial Arcade on Pitt Street, Sydney, where Westfield Sydney now stands." And it did this on the 5th of December in the year 1924. So mate, next year, at the end of next year, Woolworths, 'Woollies' in Australia, will be 100 years old! And that's as that!

So, "The name on the draft prospectus drawn up by Cecil Scott Waine was "Walworth's Bazaar". So, that's W A L W O R T H, apostrophe S, B A Z A A R. Walworth's Bazaar. "A play on the name of F.W. Woolworth, the owner of the Woolworth's chain in the United States and the United Kingdom." Hmm. So it was a bit of a joke, or a bit of a play, on this other person's chain.

Now, the first Woolworths in the USA and the UK was actually opened by Frank Winfield Woolworth on February the 22nd in the year 1879, as Woolworths Great Five Cents store in Utica- Utica, New York in the US. So how crazy is that? That's like what, 140, 150 years old?

According to Ernest Robert Williams, Percy Christmas dared him to register the name Woolworths instead, which he succeeded in doing after finding out the name was available for use in New South Wales.

So, how funny is that? Any time you go to the Woolworths store, or a Woolworths store in Australia, you need to know now that the name originates from the people who were setting up this store originally in Australia. One of them made a dare to the other one to copy the name that was used by F.W. Woolworth for his chain of stores in the United States and United Kingdom because it was legal to do so here in Australia. So. So what- what an Australian way to come up with a name! It was done because of a dare. Pretty funny. All right, guys, slap the bird and let's get into today's joke.

All right, so here's today's joke. And I was like, 'How do I tie this in with the expression touch-and-go?' Okay, so here it is.

Why did the builder touch the window? Why did the builder touch the window? To feel the 'pane'!

You get it? 'To feel the pane', 'pane' here is spelt P A N E as opposed to 'pain' P A I N, which is 'highly unpleasant, physical sensations caused by illness or injury', right. So if you hurt your leg, you might be in a lot of 'pain'.

But we use 'pane' to talk about a sheet of glass in a window or door. So, a 'pane' of glass, that is a 'pane', P A N E. So that's the joke here. "Why did the builder touch the window? To feel the 'pane'!" Right.

So sometimes, you know, if I was going to a burger store- and I do this from time to time, and I get a very spicy burger because I really like spicy food. My wife is always like, 'Why do you eat such spicy food? This stuff will burn your face off.' 'It's horrible. Why would you do this?' And I'm like, 'To feel the pain.' I kind of like the pain. I enjoy the pain. I want to feel the pain whilst I'm eating a burger. Spicy pain. Spicy goodness, I love it! I want to feel the pain. And that's P A I N, right? And if I put my hand up against the burger window, I would be feeling the pane P A N E of glass. That was the window, right. So, hopefully you understand the joke there.

Okay, let's get into the expression and break down the words in it. We'll talk a little bit about the origin. I'll give you some examples. We'll go through a pronunciation exercise and then we will finish up with a little clip from a TV show. All right.

So, 'touch'. I'm sure you will know what 'to touch something' means. 'To come into contact with' or 'to be in contact with something', right. So like at the moment, if I hit the table, I'm now 'touching' the table, right? If someone walks up behind me and grabs my shoulder to get my attention, they're 'touching' my shoulder. They're coming into contact with, or they are in contact with my shoulder. I'm in contact with the table.

'And'. This is a conjunction. I'm sure you will know the word 'and'. This must be in like the top ten most frequent words used in English. It's used to connect two words of the same part of speech. So clauses, sentences, all that sort of stuff. These things are taken together, taken jointly. She 'and' I play tennis. I like chocolate 'and' cake. So, those two things together.

'Go'. And 'go' here is 'to move from one place to another', right? So I 'go' to the shops, I 'go' home, I like to 'go' surfing, right? I leave the place that I am in and I, I arrive at, I move to the shops or I 'go' to the beach and I 'go' surfing. To 'go'.

So, what do you reckon the expression "touch-and-go" means so? And it's kind of like a compound adjective, right? Something is 'touch-and-go'. 'Touch-and-go'. 'Ooh, it's very touch-and-go'.

So, this is when talking about an outcome, especially one that's desired by you, that it is possible, but it's uncertain, right? So it's unpredictable and there's possibly going to be a bad result, but you kind of want a good result. So it's a risky, precarious and delicate case or state of things such that the slightest change could prove disastrous. So, 'touch-and-go'.

And this was a really interesting one. I jumped over to www.phrases. org.UK. It's a great website that you can go to to look up the origin and the use of different expressions in English. I often use this website and I looked up, touch and go and I didn't realise just how kind of deep the history is of this expression. So I'll read a little bit from the website.

"'Touch-and-Go' is a highly unusual expression in English in that it has developed with several different meanings. The one given above," this was above the paragraph they gave some examples, "is the most commonly used, but as the meanings lead us to the origins, let's list the variations."

Okay, so the first one was "briefly touch on something and then go to something else." That was the very first version of this expression. I'll touch on something and go to something else. It's 'touch-and-go'. "Involving rapid or careless execution." So if you did something really quickly and you didn't really care about how well you did it, it's touch and go. At least this was back in the day.

But the most common usage is "a precarious situation, one in which a small deviation could cause calamity", right? Could cause something bad to happen. "He almost didn't make it through his heart operation. It was touch-and-go." It was 'touch-and-go'.

So yeah, it was really interesting reading up that back in the 1800s there was something written about cleric Hugh Latimer, from the 1500s, and they use this expression "As the text doth rife, I wyl touch and go a lyttle in every place, vntil I come into much. I will touch al the forfyed things, but not to muche." So in modern English, this is "As points arise I will refer to each of them briefly and elaborate later. I will refer to all of the previous items, but only in passing." So yeah, I found that really cool. That it used to be used for different expressions.

It meant different things and it's kind of evolved to now mean that something may happen that is possible to happen. You're hoping it's a positive thing, but bad things could happen. So it's touch-and-go. It's sort of going back and forth between the possibilities of bad and positive.

So, let's go through three uses of how I would use the expression touch-and-go. Touch-and-go.

So example number one, imagine you're a Sheila, right? You're a woman, and probably 50% of you guys listening are women. So it won't be hard for you guys to imagine. But for all the men listening, imagine you're a woman who's a mad horse race fanatic, right? So you love your horse races, you love going to the Melbourne Cup, and you're going this year dressed up as your, you know, in your nicest frock with all your girlfriends to get on the Pearson you know, enjoy the horse races.

You're really there to see just one horse, though. Your favourite horse called Winx. Winx's race finally comes around and you'll watch her take off. She gets ahead, she gets ahead of the pack, but she starts having trouble with the horse that's coming second. It's neck and neck, and she eventually crosses the line just by a fingernail in front of number two. As she's first, she wins. But it was touch-and-go for a while, right? It was neck and neck. It was back and forward. She was losing. She was winning. She was losing. She was winning. And then she won. It was touch-and-go. It could have gone either way. It was touch-and-go.

Example number two. So, imagine your grandfather is out in the garden doing some gardening and tragically, all of a sudden he has a heart attack, right? You call the ambos, the ambulance. They come, the paramedics get him in the ambulance. They rush off to the hospital and then you follow in your car, get out, and you're like, you know, talking to the doctors, 'Is my grandfather okay?' Is grandpa is he going to be all right? What's the story? Can you tell me what's going on?

The doctor might say, 'Look, it's touch-and-go at the moment, but we're hoping he pulls through.' You know, 'We're hoping he survives. We're not sure how it's going to go. You know, he's fighting for his life. It's touch-and-go. But let's hope for the best.'

Example number three. Now, there's- a big bloody orange cat just walking in front of my window. It looks like Garfield just walked across the fence right in front of my window, guys! Sorry about that.

So, example number three. So at the moment, I've been purchasing a few different plants on eBay. A few rare cacti. So, 'cactus', the plural of 'cactus' is 'cacti', some 'cacti'.

And these cacti are called astrophytums, which means 'star leaf'. And if you look these up, A S T R O P H Y T U M, they look like a star. Okay, so they're a pretty cool little cactus. Anyway, I won't bore you too much with plant talk, but sometimes these plants are particularly sought after. They're rare. Many people want them. So when they come up on an auction on eBay or something like that, usually a lot of people are bidding all at the same time trying to win the plant, right.

So, you might be ahead in the bidding. Then suddenly you've been outbid by someone and you need to put in another higher bid in order to try and win the auction. So if it's uncertain who's going to win. You might lose. You might not be lucky, but you may win. You never know. It's touch-and-go, right? It's uncertain. It's unpredictable. It's risky. You don't know what's going to happen. Could be something good, could be something bad. It's touch-and-go.

So hopefully now, guys, you understand how to use the expression touch-and-go. This is when talking about an outcome, especially one that you desire. It's possible, but it's uncertain. You don't know whether it's going to happen or not. It's touch-and-go.

So, as usual, let's go through a little pronunciation exercise, guys. So I'm going to go through the phrase, word by word, touch-and-go, and then I'll put it into a sentence and conjugate through the different pronouns in Australian Engl- in English, right. But I'll do it in Australian English because that's the dialect that I speak, if that makes sense. All right, let's go!

Touch. Touch and. Touch and go. Touch and go. Touch and go. Touch and go. Touch and go. I said it was touch and go. You said it was touch and go. He said it was touch and go. She said it was touch and go. We said it was touch and go. They said it was touch and go. It said it was touch and go. Good job, guys!

So let's go through a little pronunciation sort of breakdown here. So what do you hear happening to the word 'and', if I pronounce that really, really well, 'and' 'and', what do you hear happening to this word when I say 'touch and go'. 'Touch and go'. 'Touch and go'.

What we're doing there is turning it into the Syllabic N, it's called. So it's effectively just /n/ /touch'n go/ /touch'n go/. You may hear a little bit of a schwa sound at the start of the word 'and' /touch'ən go/ /touch'ən go/, /touch'ən go/. Or you may just hear, /touch'n go/. /touch'n go/, /touch'n go/. We do that a lot with the word 'and' it gets reduced all the time and you'll often hear it as just a Syllabic N, /touch'n go/, /touch'n go/.

Now some other interesting stuff going on in these phrases. You'll notice with the word 'said' and 'it', the Consonant D at the end of the word 'said', and the Consonant T, that /t/ at the end of the word 'it'. Both of these change their pronunciation. So, I wouldn't say "I said it was touch and go". Instead, what do you notice happen when I say this phrase naturally? "I said◡it was touch and go." "I said◡it was touch and go." It's sort of hard to do it slowly.

The D is becoming a T flap or a D flap, if you will. They're both the same sound, so a kind of sound. It has vowels on either side of it, /e/ and /i/, /sed◡it/ /sed◡it/, and the T at the end of 'it' is getting muted. Either in your mouth when the tongue hits the top of your, the roof of your mouth /sed◡it/, /sed◡it/. Or you can do it in your throat as a glottal stop /sed◡it/, /sed◡it/. You can do it either. But you'll notice that happen all the time. 'I /sed◡it/ was /touch'ən go/'. That was me doing a glottal stop. 'I /sed◡it/ was /touch'ən go/'. 'I /sed◡it/ was /touch'ən go/'.

And now I do it with a, a stop in my mouth, right. Where the tongue just stops on the roof of my mouth. 'I /sed/ /it/ was touch-and-go'. 'I /sed/ /it/ was touch-and-go'. So it feels almost more natural to use a glottal stop there. It's a little easier to articulate. 'I /sed/ /it/ was /touch'ən go/'.

Look, this is very advanced stuff, but the basic reason for me to sort of explain this to you guys is so that you become aware of it. Hopefully, you can go back and do this exercise and then hear how my pronunciation changes in connected speech. And it'll help you both sound more Australian when you are speaking English if you can add these changes into your pronunciation.

But also, most importantly, it's going to allow you to hear Australians speaking rapidly and understand what they say, right? If I suddenly say "I sed't was touch'n go", you're going to hear all those reductions, all those changes in pronunciation of different consonants all at once. But if you've learnt about it and then you've practised it and you understand it, you're going to understand the speech much more quickly with native speakers, right? Because that's a problem I get told a lot of you guys have, all the time. 'I don't understand Australians', a lot of it is connected speech and you not being able to parse, P A R S E, as in like receive and understand the language that's being said that quickly.

Now don't forget guys, shameless plug here. If you want to learn aspects of Australian pronunciation like the vowel sounds, the consonant sounds, and then the more advanced stuff like how the D changes to a T flap, or the T becomes a glottal stop or the Syllabic N like in the word 'and' becoming /'n/, then sign up to the Aussie English pronunciation course. You can get this at www.AussieEnglish.com.au/apc.

And I should add, before we get into the little listening and writing exercise that we have here at the end. I'm going to be releasing an Aussie Accents 30 Day Course in February, so keep your eyes peeled for that. And the goal of this course is going to be that you have a short sort of five, ten, maybe 15 minutes of study, a short lesson every single day for 30 days, so you can develop a routine and a habit.

But the goal will be to expose you to over 30 different Australian voices. Okay, so you're going to hear bogans, you're going to hear ocker accents. You're going to hear professors and doctors talking about different things. You're going to hear men, women, older people, younger people, homosexual people, straight people, all kinds of different people, with Australian accents. And the whole point of this course is going to be to expose you to a load of these different accents so that when you come to Australia, or even if you're in Australia, you'll be able to go away and then hear Australians speak and be much better at listening comprehension with the Australian accent.

So it's to give you a broad range of different Aussies speaking English so you can just really nail your listening comprehension. So keep an eye out for that. It'll be something like, I'll call it something like 'the 30 day Aussie accents course' or 'Aussie Voices course', something like that. I haven't decided yet. Anyway, let's get into today's clip.

Okay, so today's clip comes from an Aussie TV show called Stateless, which is about a cult escapee, refugee, office worker, and bureaucrat finding their lives intertwined in an immigration detention centre.

So the rules of the game, guys, I'm going to play a clip for you twice and your goal is to listen and then write down what you hear being said in the clip. It's a great way to train your listening comprehension. Remember, you'll be able to check your answer if you download today's worksheet, which is free. So just go to the website and the podcast page and you can get that worksheet. Or if you've joined the Premium Podcast membership and use the transcripts, you'll see the answer obviously in the transcript of this episode. So you're ready to go. Here's the first playthrough.

Might you just come out and say it? You're here to sack me. I know how the department works. Something goes wrong. Someone has to pay. Do I get my old job back?

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

Might you just come out and say it? You're here to sack me. I know how the department works. Something goes wrong. Someone has to pay. Do I get my old job back?

All right, guys. Awesome job. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Don't forget to keep an eye out in February for the Aussie accents course. The 30 day course that I'm going to be launching. Okay, I think that's going to be a lot of fun. I think we're, we're going to have a good, good time going through this day by day, going through all the lessons and levelling up your listening comprehension. Anyway, thank you for joining me and I'll chat to you next time! Too roo!