Transcript of AE 1126 - Expression: Get the Drift

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 flipping 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. Maybe you are migrating to Australia. Maybe you're travelling here, you're working here, you're studying here. If you are trying to improve your usage and comprehension of Australian English, this is the podcast for you.

So, guys, how have you been going? How have you been going? I have been- I've been working hard today. I've been hanging out with the family as well. Try not to work too hard, but also, you know, putting in the hard yards, putting in the hard yakka, constantly trying to improve. Hope you guys are all going well.

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So, guys, as usual, let's start with a little Q&A. So, this one comes from Claucunico. Hopefully, I'm saying that correctly. And Claucunico has asked, "how do you pronounce the word 'satellite'?" "Satellite". So, before we go through how to pronounce this word, as it is an interesting word, let's define what it is.

So, it has two definitions. Firstly, it's an artificial body placed in orbit around the Earth or Moon or other planet in order to collect information or for communication, right. So, we'll have loads of different satellites above the Earth's atmosphere that are orbiting the Earth at the moment, collecting information, sending and receiving information, you know, things like photos of--I don't know--of different parts of space.

There could be GPS satellites up there, global positioning system satellites that collect data of where you are and send it back to you. Everything like that, right. "So, Elon Musk wants to launch a 'satellite' with his SpaceX company." There's a good example. The second definition, though, is that it can be a celestial body orbiting something like the Earth or another planet.

So, the Earth's satellite is the Moon. "The Moon is orbiting the Earth, it is a 'satellite' for Earth." So, the word "satellite", it seems like an easy word to pronounce. When you look at it the spelling is not really that weird. "Satellite. Satellite." But something you'll probably notice is the pronunciation of the first "T" is not normal, right.

So, you could pronounce it as a hard T, which is what I recommend you do if, for whatever reason, you have trouble pronouncing it like I do, as "satellite". Pronounce it as "satellite, satellite". But I'd pronounce the word as "satellite, satellite".

And here I'm using the syllabic L with lateral release. So, that's a kind of fancy way of saying that when you've got a T, followed by an L in a word, the tongue goes into the T position, so the tongue lifts up and touches just behind the teeth. But instead of releasing as a hard T like /t/, it actually releases the sides of the tongue away from the teeth and goes into an L.

So, you'll hear "sa-teh-lite". Right? It's a very unique sound in English. "Sa-teh-lite. Sa-teh-lite." "-llite. -llite." It's actually really difficult to do. It's something you need to practise, but you'll hear it in loads of common words like, "saddle, battle, pedal, middle". It's in a lot of these words with a D and then an L or a T and then an L. You're going to have the syllabic L with or without lateral release.

If you want to learn more about this and go through tutorials and exercises so that you can master this sound, be sure to check out my pronunciation course. Just go to AussieEnglish.com.au/APC. All right, so now slap the bird, and let's get into today's joke. So, here's today's joke. "Fire broke out at a local marijuana farm and the smoke drifted to a nearby cattle ranch. The steaks could not have been higher."

So, it wasn't a question-answer joke. It was sort of a series of phrases, but there's a big pun in that joke, right. Can you pick which word it is? Actually, there's probably two words. So, fire broke out at a local marijuana farm, a farm that is growing the plant cannabis. Could be for medicinal uses, could be recreational uses, maybe not in Australia, maybe in the US or Canada.

So, a fire broke out a local marijuana farm and the smoke drifted to a nearby cattle ranch. And "cattle" is another word with that syllabic L. "Cattle. Cattle." So, a cattle ranch is a place where they raise beef, they raise cows to become beef, right. And the punch line here is "the steaks could not be higher".

All right, so "steaks" spelt S-T-E-A-K-S is what we turn cows into, right. When you kill a cow, you harvest the meat, the meat can become beef "steaks", right, "steaks". "Steaks" that you can eat, you can put a "steak" on a barbie. However, "stakes" spelt S-T-A-K-E-S, a stake or some stakes. This is a sum of money or something else of value that is gambled on the outcome of a risky game or venture.

So, to "stake" something is to bet something. "I won't 'stake' my life on that thing." So, if you have high "stakes" in something such as a venture or decision, you have a major interest in the outcome, right? So, things are very serious. It's really important that things go well. And so, you'll often hear phrases like "high 'stakes' or the 'stakes' couldn't be higher", meaning the risks couldn't be more significant.

So, that's the joke here. The stakes couldn't be higher. So, the risks couldn't be more significant. But they've changed the spelling of "stake" to S-T-E-A-K as in the beef, "beef steak". And "high", if you smoke marijuana, the effect that you get from it is that you become intoxicated from it, and we usually say someone is "high".

So, like if you drink alcohol, you become drunk. If you smoke marijuana, you become "high". "So, fire broke out at a local marijuana farm and the smoke drifted into a nearby cattle ranch. The steaks could not have been higher." So, the idea here being that the cows inhaled the smoke and got high. All right, so there's the joke, guys. I hope you enjoyed it.

So, the expression "to get the drift. To get the drift". Let's break down the different words in this expression. To "get" something. If you "get" something, you receive something, you obtain something. "I 'got' a present", or you could say, "I 'got' COVID", right. I received or obtained that thing, even though I didn't want it, I "got" it. "The". The word "the" or "the" is a definite article.

So, "the" dog, this would be "the" specific dog as opposed to just a dog, any dog, any non-specific dog. "No, I want to talk about 'the' dog that is sitting outside my house right now." That dog. "The" dog. A "drift". So, a "drift" here, the noun, a "drift" is a continuous, slow movement from one place to another. But we often use this as a verb, "to drift". So, if something "drifts", it moves from one place to another slowly.

So, a boat whose engine breaks down will be "drifting" on the ocean. However, the word "drift" here, it means the general intention or meaning of an argument or someone's remarks. "Do you catch my 'drift'? Do you get my 'drift'?" And we kind of always use it in that kind of phrase, in that sort of expression, "to get the 'drift' or to catch the 'drift'.

And as we've already jumped into the expression here, you may hear "get my drift or catch my drift", meaning my meaning or my intention. So, yeah, if you say, "to get the drift", this is to understand something. "Okay. I get the drift." I understand it. If you say, "do you get my drift or do you catch my drift?" This is, do you understand what I'm saying? Do you understand what I mean, what I say?

And it's often used as, yeah, "catch my drift, get my drift or just get the drift". So, I looked into the origin, and I went over to word-detective.com, and this is what it had to say. "'Drift', in the sense you mention, is a somewhat colloquial use of the word to mean the meaning, implication or gist of speech or writing.

And as you perceptively note"--so, sorry, this person's replying to someone else's question about this expression--"The phrase 'if you catch my drift' is a cue for the reader or listener to not simply take what is said or written at face value, but to read between the lines.

Although 'drift' used in this sense sounds like modern slang, this usage actually dates back at least to the early 16th century." ("Hard it is to perceive the process and drift of this treaties").

So, this is from 1526. So, there you go. Anyway, let's go through three examples of how I would use the expression "to get the drift or get my drift, catch my drift". So, example number one, imagine you're at work and start dating a colleague, but it's super hush-hush. Right, it's being kept on the down low. It's being kept a secret. They don't want the secret to come out, right, because you're not meant to date colleagues.

So, sooner or later, your friends at work kind of get a little bit suspicious of what you're doing, right, they get a little bit suss. They're sort of like; this person is acting a bit weird. So, who's the special girl? You know, why are you so happy? What's her name? Blah blah blah. You tell them, "look, I can't tell you who it is because it'll get me in trouble if you 'catch my drift'."

So, I can't tell you who it is, because if you read between the lines of what I'm saying, it's someone at work. Right, if I tell you who it is, I'm going to get in trouble. "So, hopefully you can work it out, but I can't tell you who it is because it'll get me into trouble if you 'get the drift, if you get my drift, if you catch my drift'."

Example number two, imagine you're at school one day and in class learning about some really complicated mathematics, right. So, for me, maths was never my forte. It was never something I was strong at, I was good at. I was actually pretty atrocious at it. I was pretty bad, but I still had to do it as I wanted to study science at uni, at university.

So, the teacher- Imagine this, you know, this hypothetical day. You're in class and the teacher is explaining everything and then at the end of the explanation, looks out to a room of students who look confused, perplexed, puzzled, you know, just absolutely, yeah, lost for words because of how complicated it is. And the teacher might say, "did anyone 'get the drift' of what I was saying? Did anyone understand? Did anyone 'catch my drift'?"

And perhaps there's a really smart kid in the class who always seems to understand everything, he puts his hand up, he raises his hand and says, "yeah, no worries. I 'got the drift'. I understood."

Example number three, at the moment, I'm reading the book Dune in Portuguese. It's pretty deep and has a lot of complicated language in it, and sometimes I find sections really difficult to read and understand, you know, because I've got to look up a heap of new words or expressions or collocations.

However, because my Portuguese is pretty good, usually I "get the drift". I "get the drift" of what's going on. I understand what's happening. I can follow things. Even if I have trouble with the odd vocabulary, you know, the odd word, the odd phrase, "I get the drift". I understand.

So, by now, guys, hopefully you understand the expression "to get the drift or to get my drift, to catch my drift". This is to understand something. "Did you get the drift?" Or to understand what someone is saying. "Did you get their drift? Did you get my drift? Did you catch my drift?" So, as usual, guys, let's go through a little pronunciation exercise. This is where I'm going to go through the sentence "to get the drift".

We'll focus on connected speech here, what happens to the different sounds when I say this phrase naturally and quickly. And then we'll also conjugate through the phrase "if you catch my drift". So, let's go.

"To. To get. To get the. To get the drift. To get the drift. To get the drift. To get the drift. To get the drift. If I catch your drift. If you catch your drift. If he catches your drift. If she catches your drift. If we catch your drift. If they catch your drift. If it catches your drift." Great work, guys, great work.

Now, if we go through the phrase "to get the drift"- We've talked about the T in the last two episodes, so if you go and check out the previous two episodes, you'll learn about things like aspiration and how the T turns into a T-flap. Something in this episode is interesting because this time with the word "get", the next word is "the", so it's not starting with a vowel sound.

So, in which case the T would become a T-flap like in, "get out, get out", and because it's not coming at the end of a phrase, the "T" at the end of "get", it's not being aspirated. Like the "get", /t/, like that. It's actually being muted because the next sound is a /th/. "To get the drift, to get the drift".

So, all that happens here is that the tongue goes up into the /t/ sound, so the tongue raises up, stops the air coming out of the mouth and rests just behind the front teeth, "to get, to get". And then instead of releasing, so instead of saying "get", we go to the "th" in the word "the", just straight to it, tongue comes up, stops the "T" and then goes straight into the "th". "To get the, to get the".

So, you'll notice the tongue slowly go down the back of the teeth and into the "th", "to get the drift. To get the drift. To get the drift." The other thing here is what do you notice happen with the "D" in the word "drift"? Because there's an "R" after the "D", the "D" is not set as a /d/ sound.

Instead, you'll hear a /dʒr/. So, it's actually a /dʒ/ sound like in the word "jump, jump", but it goes straight into an /r/ sound after it because you've got "dr". You'll notice this all the time. "Drink, drop, draft, dragon, drift". It's /dʒr/. If you want to learn more about this, guys, obviously go and check out my Australian pronunciation course, I mention this each time.

The "dr" is definitely in there. It's one of the more advanced lessons and you'll also see the same thing happen or the equivalent thing happen with "tr" in words, except it's unvoiced. You'll hear /tr/ instead of /dʒr/. So, if you want to learn that advanced lesson, it's in there with the other 25 advanced lessons in the Aussie pronunciation course. Go check it out at AussieEnglish.com.au/APC.

So, the last little section here, guys, this is where we practise your listening comprehension, where you get to listen to a clip out of an Australian TV show or film. Today's clip comes from the famous Aussie film called "Red Dog". This is the story of a lovable canine that roams the outback in Australia and finds his way into the hearts of each and every person he meets along the way.

So, if you find your way into someone's heart, this is for someone to sort of begin to love you or like you, right, to become very fond of you, you've found your way into their heart. So, the rules of the game, I'm going to play the clip for you twice, and your goal is to listen and then write down what you hear being said. It's a great way to train your listening comprehension.

Remember, grab a pen or pencil and a piece of paper and try and write out what you hear. If you need more time, just rewind the episode, have a listen again. And remember if you want to check your answer afterwards, download today's free worksheet, which you can get on the website and you can see the answer there at the bottom.

Or if you're a member of the Premium podcast or academy memberships, you'll be able to see the full transcript for this episode, and this phrase will be transcribed in there for you to just read. Okay, so you're ready to go? Here's the first playthrough.

"It's come to our attention that you're in serious violation of park rules."

Good job. So, how'd you go? Did you understand everything that was said there? Time for the second playthrough.

"It's come to our attention that you're in serious violation of park rules."

Alright, that's it for me today, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I will see you next time. Peace!