Transcript of AE 1164 - Expression: Pull Your Own Weight

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 flip and our 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 guys! How's it going? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to wrap their heads around the interesting dialect of Australian English. Guys, if it is your first time here, welcome! Sit back, relax, grab a cuppa. As I said at the start, grab a cup of coffee, a cup of tea and enjoy this intermediate to advanced English lesson.

And if you are a return listener, a repeat offender, welcome back. It's good to have you here again. So, guys, oh, man, it has been an incredible week, or weekend, rather. It's a Monday at the moment when I'm recording this. But it has been pretty eventful. As you may have noticed, if you heard the previous episode, Pete's 2 Cents - Do Aussies Really Eat Kangaroos?, where I told you about the recent news, you will have heard that we recently put in an offer for a house and are currently undergoing the process that is purchasing our first home. So it is incredibly exciting but equally daunting, equally kind of anxiety-inducing, right? It's sort of like, ooh, this is a huge amount of debt for me to get in.

It feels like a huge responsibility. So yeah, currently going through that and today, you know, it's been full on. Today is the Monday after, well, we put the offer in on Saturday and I've been having to organise the contract with the realtors, the finance, with my mortgage broker. I've had to organise conveyancing, right? So the legal side of things, someone to go over the legal document and give feedback and make amendments and everything like that. And then I've also had to organise a pest and building inspector and I've done all of that today. It's just been full throttle, right? Flat out. Flat out like a lizard drinking. It's been full on, very busy. It's been incredible.

So yeah, it's definitely been a steep learning curve where I've had to suddenly learn about all these things that you need to have happening when purchasing a house. It seems like you're juggling a lot of different balls at the same time, but hopefully it all goes well, guys. Wish me luck. Wish me luck.

So guys, as usual, don't forget if you would like access to the transcripts for all the episodes on the podcast, except for the Pete's 2 Cents episodes, those are un-transcribed. I wonder if that's- they're not transcribed. And if you want all the transcripts for every other episode; so I think that's more than 1100 episodes now, you can get access to them when you sign up to the Premium Podcast Membership at www.aussieenglish.com.au/podcast. You'll find it on the website, but effectively you get the transcripts, you get bonus episodes, you get video lessons that come with certain episodes.

And then I think most importantly, you get the Premium Podcast Player. So this is where you can read and listen at the same time. It's the most effective way of improving your listening comprehension and your vocab. At the same time, obviously, you know, if you can see the words on the screen that you are hearing simultaneously, literally, like word for word, that is a very effective way of really honing in your listening comprehension skills because you don't miss anything, right? You see every single word being said in front of you. So again, go check that out at www.aussieenglish.com.au/podcast.

Now guys, let's get into the Q&A for today. So this one comes from Jessy who asks, "How do you learn more words and use them when speaking on a daily basis?" So there's no real simple answer to this. There's no sort of just do this one little trick and you're all set, but effectively it's read a lot, right? So you need to read things that you are interested in, things that you're passionate about, but most importantly, things that are relevant to you and your life, the kinds of things that you're going to be talking about, right? So if you are always reading, say, books about, I don't know, ancient Rome, but you never really talk about that subject because say, I don't know, you're an engineer and your friends have no interest in ancient Rome or anything like that.

So the topic never comes up. You're going to get really good vocab and probably speaking skills related to ancient Rome. But if that topic isn't related to what you talk about, most of the time, it's kind of not helpful. If your goal, simultaneously, is to get better at speaking. So it's important to read a lot, but it's important to devote a lot of your reading time to topics that you're going to be talking about. So stuff related to your work, to your passions, to your friends, your surroundings, to the culture that you're in, whatever it is that you're interested in and is relevant to your life.

It's interesting, or it's important to read about those things. And I did a video, you can check this out on YouTube. And I think it would also be a podcast episode, but it was called How to Develop Fluency in English with Macro and Micro Islands. So go check that video out because that'll help you develop your islands, which are effectively the different topics that are relevant to your life, the small ones and the big ones. So go check that video out.

And then beyond that, it's obviously speaking. The more you do it, the better you're going to get, right? Time on target. You need to be working on the thing that you're trying to improve. If you want to become a better marathon runner, you need to be training. Running, right? You need to be doing the running training that is associated with getting better at running marathons as opposed to, say, swimming or doing gymnastics. They're going to help your fitness, but they're not really going to help you become better at running.

So all these other tasks, you know, listening to podcasts and reading books and everything like that are kind of useless if at the end of the day you don't actually speak. So a combination of those two things I think is very powerful. Read a lot! Read a lot about things that are relevant to you in your life. Read a lot about the things that you're going to be talking about, and then talk about the things that you are reading about, that you are passionate about. Share those ideas with people, those things that you've discovered, that you've found out that you're interested in, have those conversations. Okay, so I hope that helps, Jessy! Good luck. And yeah, let me know how you go. Let me know how you go, guys.

And if you have different tips and tricks for how to improve your speaking skills, guys, then please definitely let me know. Send me a message, send me an email and tell me what's worked for you in the past. You know, how have you levelled up your speaking skills and learnt a lot of vocab? All right, time to get into the joke. So slap that bird and let's begin.

Okay, so today's joke is, "Why did the diet coach send her clients to the paint store?" Okay. So a diet coach, I guess this would be someone who's obviously coaching you, training you with a specific diet, right? The food that you're going to be eating to probably help you lose weight or build muscle or whatever it is. "Why did the diet coach send her clients to the paint store?" So a store or a shop where you would buy paint stuff; to paint your house or a car or something.

"Why did the diet coach send her clients to the paint store?"

"She heard you could get thinner."

There. Thinner, thinner, thinner. So the joke here is on 'thinner'. If you get 'thinner' in terms of, say, weight loss, you are losing weight. Right. If you are overweight, if you are obese, if you are fat, you are- I guess you're wider. Although we would never really use 'wide' to refer to someone's body size. I think you would usually say, you know, 'fat', 'obese', 'large'. And then the inverse is that, the inverse is kind of 'thin', 'little', 'skinny', right? You know, they're the two extremes. So if you get thinner, you lose weight.

But if you get 'thinner', in this sense, they're referring to obtaining paint thinner. And paint thinner is a solvent that is used to thin out oil based paints. So you'll often be able to go to a paint store, obviously, and buy paint thinner.

So that's the joke. "Why did the diet coach send her clients to the paint store?" "She heard you could get thinner there." The idea being that they can buy paint thinner, but they can also lose weight there, they can get 'thinner' there.

All right. Anyway, you'll see how this joke is connected to the expression today, because today's expression is about weight. To pull your own weight is today's expression. But before we get into that and what it means, let's go through the different words in this expression.

So if you 'pull' something. If you 'pull' something, you exert force on someone or something so as to cause that thing to move towards you. Right. You're pulling something towards you as opposed to, say, pushing something away from you. 'Pull', 'towards', 'push', 'away'. And it's funny, as a sort of side note, Brazilians will know the pain here or anyone who speaks Portuguese. The word for 'pull', 'to pull' in Portuguese is 'puxar', which sounds like 'to push', but it spelt P U X A R 'puxar', and that means 'to pull'. 'Empurrar', E M P U R R A R, means 'to push'. Right? Am I getting this right? No, no. To pull. See, even I'm confusing myself. Yeah. Yeah. So it works both ways. It works both ways, I think. Am I getting this right? Yeah. 'Puxar' is pull, and 'empurrar' is push. Yeah, yeah. Jeez. Confusing the hell out of myself.

Anyway, the funny thing is that if you were to say 'pular', which sounds like it would mean to mean 'pull' P U L A R, it actually means 'to jump'. So yeah, go figure. Anyway, it's a funny thing. I remember going to my Brazilian jiujitsu gym all the time and on the front of the door it would say 'push' because you obviously have to push the door in, to get into the gym. And my Brazilian coach would always walk up and be pulling the door, thinking 'puxar' in Portuguese and thinking it was saying 'pull'. Anyway, I remember that. That's never going to leave me. So yeah, kids might pull each other's hair. You might pull on the tail of a dog. You know, you're bringing that thing towards yourself.

'Your'. I'm sure you'll know what 'your' is. The second person possessive pronoun: 'your' cat, 'your' dog, 'your' house.

Own. Own. So, in this sense, it is your 'own' something, meaning something that belongs to that person or the thing mentioned, right? So it's 'This money here.' This is his 'own' money. It's the money that he owns. 'She has her own house.' That house over there is the house that she owns. It's her own house.

And the last word here, 'weight', guys. I'm sure you'll know what this means. "A body's relative mass or the quantity of matter contained by it." Right. "Giving rise to a downward floor." So, "the heaviness of a personal thing." So at the moment, I'm sitting in a chair, my weight is resting on the chair. The heaviness that I have, the amount of my body's mass is the weight of that thing. And I currently weigh my weight is about 80 something kilos.

Anyway, let's get in here. So the expression 'pull your weight' or 'pull your own weight', is to do things that you should do as part of a group of people so that you're all working together. So it's to do your fair share, to do your- the fair amount of work or effort that you need to do so that everyone's doing their fair share. Right? They're pulling their own weight.

Now, I looked up the origin and I went on Google, typed in, you know, the expression and the origin. And it sent me to www.grammarist.com which states "The idiom 'pull one's own weight' came into use in the latter 1800s from a rowing team." Right. So people sitting in a small boat that pull oars and race; a rowing team. "The sports of rowing, sculling and crew involve teamwork between a number of participants as they sit in a boat and pull the oars through the water. Each person is expected to pull his or her weight or row just as hard as any of the other team members." Because obviously, if you're pulling your own weight, you are exerting enough force on those oars to move your weight in the boat along. And if you're not pulling those oars with much strength, everyone else in the boat is having to pick up the slack.

That's a good expression for you there, 'having to do the work for you', to be able to move your weight in that boat. So that would be the literal sense. You're sitting in a boat, you're rowing, you are hopefully pulling your own weight, literally. Figuratively, it would be to do your fair share in a group of people that you're working with to achieve something.

So let's go through three examples of how I would use this expression in day to day English.

So example number one, imagine that you start a job as a nurse at a hospital after you've graduated from uni, right? You finish university, you studied nursing and you got a job. You landed a job at a hospital. So initially you work really hard, but after a few months you start taking it a little easy, right? You start to slack off a little bit, you get lazy and you prefer to work as little as possible. So your team might start to notice that you're slacking off and being a little lazy and eventually your manager might pull you aside, kind of like get you to come and talk to them privately. They pull you aside, and she might say, 'Look, mate, you're going to have to start pulling your own weight. You need to pull your weight. You need to start being a team player. You need to start working as hard as everyone else on the team doing your fair share.' You need to pull your weight. You need to pull your own weight.

Example number two. When I was growing up as a kid, I remember when I first started getting pocket money from my parents. And pocket money is an allowance, a small amount of money that is usually given to their children by their parents to buy things like toys and food and whatever they want to spend it on. They get it for doing chores. So I remember when I first started getting pocket money from my parents, my folks, it was something like $5 a week. And when I got older, you know, it went up to $10 a week and then maybe $20 a week. And then eventually I got a job and the pocket money no longer came in.

Anyway, when I started to receive my pocket money, the condition upon getting the pocket money was that I pulled my own weight around the house and looking back, you know, it was pretty trivial, the kind of stuff that I had to do, right? I didn't really have to work that hard for five bucks, but I had to do things like, you know, clear the table, load the dishwasher, take out the rubbish, walk the dog, clean my room, vacuum the house, you know, those sorts of chores I had to do. I had to pull my own weight. I had to do my fair share, do my bit, and in response. So as a result, I would get my $5, $10, $20 pocket money. And if I didn't pull my own weight, I'd get bugger all. I'd get nothing.

All right. Example number three. So the literal version here, imagine, I can imagine when I was back at school, we had to do school sports, which meant that every season, so summer and winter, we'd have to pick a sport, train at two times a week at least, and compete most weekends. So there were sports like swimming, tennis, hockey, cricket, rowing. These were some sports that you obviously do in the sort of spring, summer months. And then in the autumn winter months you would have soccer, footy, football, you'd have rugby, and I did fencing. I actually did that as well as the other two sports all year round.

So if you did rowing, as the expression, or as the example at the start, the explanation for where this came from, I guess I've already sort of given it away to you guys, right? If you did rowing, which was one of the sports at school, there were eight rowers and a coxswain or coxswain in the boat. And all the people except the coxswain, the cox C O X, would have to pull their own weight whilst rowing. Right. I think you get the idea. We've effectively gone over it, but that was the use of the expression, literally and figuratively pulling your own weight. And I remember there used to be fights every now and then when, you know, a certain team, a rowing team would have someone who was pretty slack on the boat.

The rest of the team would have to pick up the slack and, you know, row harder because that person was lazy or perhaps they weren't strong enough or whatever, and they weren't pulling their own weight.

So hopefully now you guys understand the expression 'to pull your own weight', 'to pull your weight'. This is 'to do the things that you should do as part of a group', as part of a group of people who are working on something together. You're doing your fair share, you're pulling your own weight.

So as usual, guys, let's go through a little pronunciation exercise. This is where I'm going to read out a bunch of different sentences, and I want you to repeat the words, the sentences, after me. Focus on things like intonation, pronunciation of the vowels and the consonants, the rhythm that I'm using, everything like that.

And as I always say, if you're not working on an Aussie accent, you know, you don't have to try and mimic me exactly. Just use the phrases to speak aloud using the pronunciation that you have, that you're working on, whatever accent that may be. Okay. Doesn't really matter. Well, let's go.

To to pull. To pull your. To pull your own. To pull your own weight. To pull your own weight. To pull your own weight. To pull your own weight. To pull your own weight. I didn't pull my own weight. You didn't pull your own weight. He didn't pull his own weight. She didn't pull her own weight. We didn't pull our own weight. They didn't pull their own weight. It didn't pull its own weight.

Great job, man. It's funny. So you could say 'you pull your own weights'. 'We pull your own weights'. 'They pull their own weights' when using the plural form, the plural pronouns, 'you', 'we' and 'they'. But it just sounds weird. So I think it's a bit unnatural, although it would make sense, right? If you're referring to multiple people, it's each of their weights, so it's plural. But because the expression is so commonly heard in the singular, 'pull your own weight', 'pull my own weight', 'pull his own weight', 'her own weight'. It sounds a little more natural to say 'our own weight', 'their own weight' or 'your own weight' as plural. So pick and choose. People will understand whatever it is that you end up saying here, whether it's singular or plural.

Now, let's talk a little bit about pronunciation, connected speech, reductions. So in the phrase, 'to pull your own weight', 'to' and 'yuh', 'your own', 'your own', 'to', and 'your' get reduced and they get given the schwa vowel sound. So instead of 'to pull your own weight', you'll hear 'to pull your own weight' and you'll hear that rhythm ta duh duh da duh. So the words that we're emphasising are 'pull', 'own', and 'weight'. So that's why you hear that ta duh duh da duh, right? To pull your own weight.

To pull your own weight. How are we linking 'your' and 'own', you'll hear that intrusive R, where we say 'your-oh'- in fact, it's the linking R, it's not intrusive, because it's in the spelling of the word 'your'. 'Yorown', 'yorown', 'your own weight'. And what you will notice throughout the phrases that I said. So 'my own weight'. 'Your own weight', 'his own weight', 'her own weight'. 'Our own weight', 'their own weight', 'its own weight'. We will link, whatever the vowel sound or consonant sound is before the O in the word 'own', or the vowel sound O in the word 'own'.

We'll link off the previous sound. Mah-yoan, yo-rown, hi-sown. It-sown. Okay, so pay attention to that. By doing that you will sound much more natural when speaking English. That's some really good connected speech there.

And lastly, I wonder if you guys heard the T in the word 'didn't', right? If I say 'I didn't pull my own weight'. Did you hear the T? 'I didn't pull my own weight'. So it can actually be muted here because you've got N, T, P, right? The consonant sounds there in a row, 'didn't', 'pull', 'it' up because there are three there. Often, if the T is in the middle, it gets muted. So 'didn't pull', 'didn't pull', 'didn't pull'. That's something to be aware of and something to practice. Again, if you want to sound more natural when speaking English. Guys, if you want to learn all of these little aspects to Australian English pronunciation and more broadly speaking, English pronunciation in general, check out my Australian pronunciation course. You can get it at www.aussieenglish.com.au/apc

Okay, go check that out. You'll learn all the different consonant and vowel sounds in Australian English. You'll learn to master how to use the International Phonetic Alphabet to level up pronunciation by yourself or with a teacher. And there are also 25 Advanced Lessons at the end teaching you things like when to mute the T, the Linking R, in Australian English. The intrusive R, the Syllabic N and L, all those very advanced aspects to English pronunciation that will make you sound a lot more natural when speaking.

All right, guys. So now it is time for the last little section of this episode. This is where I play a clip from a film or series, and your goal is to try and write down what you hear. So this clip comes from the Aussie film Last Cab to Darwin and the excerpt is "a terminally ill cab driver picks up an Indigenous drifter and a backpacker while travelling through the Australian outback to get euthanased", or euthanised. Rather Euthanased? Euthanised. Yeah, I always mispronounce that word. So this is a really good movie. It's kind of touching. It's a little sad, but it's also kind of heartfelt. It's kind of- it's kind of uplifting as well. So I definitely recommend checking it out. So yeah, the rules of the game.

I'm going to play the clip for you twice, get a pen and some paper and try and write down what you hear. If you want to check the answer, download the free worksheet for today's episode, or if you've obviously got the Premium Podcast Membership, you can read the transcript and it will be written there in the transcript. So you're ready to go? Here's the first playthrough.

I've never been more sure of anything in my life.

All right. How did you go? Did you get all of it? Time for the second one.

I've never been more sure of anything in my life.

Awesome work, guys. That's it for me today. Thank you so much for joining me, guys. I really appreciate it. I hope you enjoy this episode. And I hope that the ads on the podcast haven't been too intrusive. I hope they haven't been too annoying.

From what I've seen, they're not playing on every single episode. So there's probably many of you who haven't even heard an ad yet. But yeah, keep your- your ears open. Keep your eyes open as well and see if you notice any of them popping up from time to time. And hopefully it allows you to hear different accents and maybe even find other podcasts that will help you level up your English as well.

So guys, I am Pete, this is Aussie English. Thank you for joining me and I will see you next time. Catch ya!