Transcript of AE 1064 - Expression: A Snake Oil Salesman

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. My name is Pete, I am your host. And this is the Aussie English podcast, another expression episode where I'm going to be teaching you an Australian, well, English expression that you can obviously use in Australia. The one today is not necessarily specifically Australian.

In fact, the majority of the ones I teach you aren't just only used in Australia, you can use these anywhere. Anyway, let's get into today's episode. Got myself a little drink here, guys. Don't forget to grab yourself a cuppa, right, a cup of tea, a cup of coffee.

Or maybe a cheeky little bevvy, right, a beverage, could be a beer, could be a soft drink, could be a glass of water, whatever floats your boat. Right. Whatever gets you off, whatever you enjoy. So, what have I been up to this week? Oh, it's been much of the same. I've just heard today, although, you know, obviously you guys will get the news later.

But today the announcement has come out, the borders are going to open to fully vaccinated people with visas on the 1st of December. So, isn't that awesome? Isn't that awesome? Way well ahead of what we were thinking earlier this year.

So, I've got, in fact, all the visas sitting in front of me. I'll tell you guys, if you want to go to COVID19.HomeAffairs.gov.au/vaccinated-travellers, and I'm sure you can just Google "vaccinated travellers home affairs". You will get the full list and arrangements for all of the different visas that are allowed, you know, to come back into Australia.

So, I'm looking forward to hearing from you guys and getting up to date with all of you coming back to Australia or coming here for the first time, or even going home and seeing your family, because that's the other thing. Finally, the borders are open. I was chatting to a mate, David, who's from India, and he's like, finally, I can go home after three years in order to see my family.

So, yeah, sort of some good news recently. So, glad to hear that. Anyway, as usual, guys, you probably heard the previous episode and you've been paying attention to the fact that I am answering questions from you guys now on the podcast and showcasing your English.

So, you can submit a video, or you can submit some audio or both, obviously, yeah, don't send me a video with no audio. I can't really do much with that. But where you're able to ask me a question and I'll answer it on the podcast. So, remember to do that just go to AussieEnglish.com.au/AskPete, A-S-K P-E-T-E, if I can spell it all right. Anyway, today's question comes from Jonathan from the Netherlands. Let's have a listen.

Hey, Pete, this is Jonathan from the Netherlands. I love your podcast and what you do, so keep doing it and keep going. I have a question about the letter L today. So, at the end of a word, it almost sounds like a W. My second question is about unstressed syllables, especially the double o.

I know there's a difference between "good" and "food", for instance, but if the vowel or the syllable isn't stressed, how would you go about pronouncing that? I was wondering whether you could shed some more light on the matter. Anyways, I hope you're okay with lockdown and everything and hope to see some more podcasts in the near future.

All right, so awesome. John had a few questions there. So, firstly, he was sort of interested in why the L at the ends of syllables and words sometimes get pronounced like a /w/ sound. So, John in, I think, probably all dialects of English, but at least in Australian English and British English RP we call this the dark L.

So, this is where the lips round, they kind of round inwards to make a /ʉː/ kind of sound instead of pronouncing the L when there's no vowel after the L. So, it can be that there's a consonant sound after the L, say the word "cold", right, instead of "coɫd", with the light L we'd say "coɭd".

Or it could be the word "coaɭ", right, instead of "coaɫ". Right. The thing that our prime minister brought into parliament one day to say, look, it's just coal. Don't be scared. I'll play the clip for you.

This is coal. Don't be afraid. Don't be scared.

So, yeah, we do this all the time when either the L is followed by no sound at all, right. It's found at the end of a sentence, or it's just on its own as a word, like if someone were to just yell out "hell". But we also do it if there's a consonant after the L, so in words like "help or cold".

So, we're just using our lips, we're rounding them inwards to make that /ʉː/ kind of sound. Instead of raising the tongue, the tongue staying flat. Instead of raising the tongue like a light L and having it touch or get close to the roof of the mouth. /ɭ/ yeah, touching the palate. /ɭ/. So, /ɭ/ is the light L, /ɫ/ is the dark L.

Now you asked also about the pronunciation of words with "oo", and if you can ever say them unstressed, as the unstressed syllable. So, for a bit of background, so English is a language where syllables or even, yeah, single words can be stressed or unstressed. This is where you would say the vowel sound and consonant sounds clearly versus where you would say, for instance, the vowel sound you would reduce it to the schwa the /ə/ sound.

So, I wonder if- If you listen to the following words, can you hear where the schwa is? "Given. Given. Banana. Banana. Banana. About. About. About. And wanted. Wanted". So, we do this a lot. Now I was kind of interested, I was sort of perplexed. I'm like, hmmm, words with double o where the syllable with that vowel or that vowel sound with the "oo" spelling is not emphasised.

And I went through looking up word lists and saying them in my head, you know, like a crazy guy, trying to work out, do we always pronounce these, or do we emphasise them? What happens when these syllables are unstressed? So, firstly, the spelling "oo" in English, as you guys probably are aware, there are actually five pronunciations of the spelling "oo", right, double o.

"Room", that's /ʉː/, the /ʉː/ vowel sound. "Book", that's the /ʊ/, short /ʊ/ vowel sound. "Blood", that's the short /ʌ/ vowel sound. "Door", that's the long /ɔː/ vowel sound. And then in the word "zoology or zoology", it's either /uˈɒ/ or /əʊˈɒ/. "Zuˈɒlogy. Zəʊˈɒlogy". So, pretty crazy, right.

All right, and so it turns out when you have words with multiple syllables where one is stressed and the one with the double "oo" is unstressed, you still have to pronounce the vowel sound, you can't turn it into a schwa. At least that's how English works. It just for whatever reason, you don't say "neighbourhood", you say neighbourhood, right.

"Bathroom", you don't say that, you say "bathroom". "Lifeblood", you say "lifeblood". So, that's just how it is. Any word with the double o in it, you're going to have to pronounce that vowel sound, it's never going to get reduced. But as always, guys, I may be wrong. And if I am, please let me know. Send me an email, send me a message and say, hey Pete, I found the exception.

So, once again, massive thank you to John for this question. Guys, I want your questions, so feel free to submit your question about anything, about English, about Australia, about me. Whatever you're curious about, send me a question. Just go to AussieEnglish.com.au/AskPete, and submit your video, audio or just audio question. Totally up to you, but I'm looking forward to seeing them.

So, now it's time to get into today's weekly news story. Qantas staff are having to use wheel whackers to scare off rattlesnakes drawn to planes sitting in storage. During the pandemic, countless aeroplanes have been grounded indefinitely and moved to hot, dry places in order to store them somewhere they won't rust.

Qantas has done so in California's Mojave Desert, an incredibly hot, dry place in the US. Whilst it's a great place to store planes for the time being, it's also renowned for having loads of creepy crawlies living in it, including countless rattlesnakes. The planes heat up in the hot desert sun during the day and hold on to that warmth into the night.

As a result, the area has drawn in rattlesnakes looking for a toasty place to keep warm. Unfortunately, the planes have to be regularly inspected by humans. It was quickly noted that the rattlesnakes were making themselves home among the plane landing gear, which has led to the inspectors having to resort to some interesting tactics.

Firstly, whilst approaching the equipment, they have to stamp their feet as a warning for the snakes, then they have to whack the wheels with sticks to scare off any slumbering snakes. Besides encountering quite a few rattlesnakes whilst on the job, inspectors have also come across the odd scorpion here and there.

Here's hoping to when the planes take to the air again none of the rattlesnakes make it into the cabin where the passengers are or worse still into the cockpits with the pilots. Talk about a living nightmare.

Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!

All right, guys, it's time to slap the bird, as my t-shirt here says. Remember, you can grab them at AussieEnglish.com.au/shirt. Quick little sales pitch. Go check out these shirts. But slap that bird and let's get into today's joke. All right, it's a goody, but it's also awful. Awful as always, guys. I feel like these jokes need to be put inside the crackers used at Christmas.

So, you ready for this? What do snakes use to clean their cars? What do snakes use to clean their cars? Windshield vipers. All right, so the play on words here is the pronunciation of, say, "viper" instead of a "wiper". All right, so windshield wipers are the things on the front of your car used to clear the water away and clean the windshield or the windscreen.

And a viper is a type of venomous snake. Windshield wipers. Windshield vipers. Remember, I know a lot of you guys have trouble with this, especially you Iranians. So, any of you guys who find that W versus V pronunciation really difficult go and check out my Australian pronunciation course. And there's a lesson in there specifically designed to teach you to no longer make that mistake.

It teaches you how to pronounce the difference and how to hear the difference. Okay, the /v/ verses /w/. So, you can check that out at Aussie English.com.au/APC. Go check it out. All right, let's go through the different words in this expression, "a snake oil salesman".

We'll break down what it means. We'll talk a little bit about the origin. Give you some examples of how to use it in everyday English. We'll go through a pronunciation exercise and then a little clip at the end and finish up. So, let's go through the words. "A snake". "A snake" is an animal. It's a long, limbless reptile, which has no eyelids, a short tail and jaws that are capable of considerable extension.

Some snakes are venomous, whilst others aren't. "Oil". "Oils" are any of the various viscous liquids which are insoluble in water but soluble in organic solvents and are obtained from animals or plants. So, "oil" that is used to form petrol comes from the fossilisation of plants and other animals and bacteria and everything like that. That's "oil".

"Snake oil" is a substance with no real medicinal value sold as a remedy for all diseases. So, it can be any substance, it doesn't necessarily have to be made from snakes. And it can also be more sort of, figuratively speaking, a product, a policy or any other kind of thing that's sold to people with no real worth or value.

And it's promoted as a solution to a certain problem when in reality it isn't. And a "salesman" is a man or a woman who sells a certain product or products as they're living. So, I wonder if you can guess what "a snake oil salesman" is. If someone is "a snake oil salesman" they are deceiving people by persuading them to accept false information solutions that aren't effective or fake products, right.

Buying fake products in particular. So, this is a really interesting history. I was looking this up and this comes from the website SanLuisObispo.com. So, "snake oil" has been shortened from "snake oil salesman", and it's the nickname for someone who is a trader in lies and false cures. The origin of the term dates back to the California gold rush in the US.

Chinese immigrants arrive to seek their fortune and later more were brought to California as indentured labour for the transcontinental railroad. Among the medicinal traditions they brought was snake oil made from the mildly venomous Chinese water snake. The oil is rich in omega-3 acids and was said to reduce inflammation from arthritis, bursitis or sore muscles caused by hewing granite to make way for rail lines.

So, there you go. And then quickly after this interestingly, a lot of people realised, oh, there's a demand for this snake oil that the Chinese migrants are bringing over. So, we'll just make fake snake oil and sell that as the real thing.

And so, we had all these Americans that then went on to create snake oil and sell it as this miracle cure to all your problems. But in reality, it was just, you know, dead snakes that have been boiled down and the product did nothing. So, how would you use this expression in day-to-day English? Let's go through a few examples.

So, at the moment, we've got a lot of issues with anti-vaxxers and COVID and the vaccines. We've got politicians that are arguing over different things and trying to put into place legislation in parliament that is going to take away people's freedoms. You know, there's a lot of these issues, but certain politicians are putting forward policies that aren't actually going to do anything, they're not going to do anything good.

And so, we could refer to these politicians, these pollies if you want to use some Aussie slang, as "snake oil salesman", right. They are selling something figuratively that is phoney, it's fake, it's dodgy. It doesn't actually deliver what the the thing is meant to deliver.

So, if for instance, you know, the argument in Victoria is that Dan Andrews is bringing in these laws that are going to take away the rights from people who don't want to get vaccinated. If it was shown that what he was doing wasn't going to change anything and he knew it, you know, it was completely fake, it was just a power grab, he is "a snake oil salesman". I don't think that's the case.

But if it were, he's "a snake oil salesman". Example number two, imagine you get sick from some kind of stomach bug, right. I did an interview episode recently with my mate, Ross McGibbon. He talked about being sick with three different parasites that had infected his body.

And it took him a year to get a good diagnosis and finally take some medicine and some natural herbs and other things to help flush these things out of his system. So, let's imagine that he found this out, and he goes to a naturopath who turns out to be really dodgy, really dark, fake, you know, selling lies.

If this naturopath were to give him just some water and tell him, you know, this is some great ointment that's going to get rid of all these parasites, you know, just put this on your skin twice a day. That naturopath is "a snake oil salesman". He's selling lies. He's selling a product that's completely fake.

Example number three, imagine you get visited at your house by, you know, a salesman, someone selling something to you, they knock on your door and they're like, hey, my name is so-and-so. I'm from this company and I sell cleaning products, and I think they're amazing. You got to buy them; you've got to try them.

They'll clean everything and anything, you know, you can clean your car with it, you can clean your kitchen floor, you could clean your kid's toenails with this amazing product. You're taken aback and you're like, damn, I've got to get this product, I got to buy it.

So, you buy up everything that this person has. You then go into the house and try and give it a whirl, right, maybe you try and clean the floors and it ends up just making things messier, dirtier than they were beforehand.

You know that the product is fake, it's phoney, it's dodgy, it doesn't work. So, the person who sold it to you is "a snake oil salesman". So, hopefully now, guys, you understand the expression, "a snake oil salesman". This is someone who deceives people by persuading them to accept false information, solutions that aren't effective or to buy products that don't work, right, "a snake oil salesman".

So, as usual, let's go through a little pronunciation exercise. This is where I'm going to read out some phrases for you to listen to and then repeat after me. Focus on my pronunciation, intonation, rhythm, which words are stressed, which bits aren't, you know, is the schwa being used, how are words being connected, everything like that. Okay. So, find somewhere away from other people and repeat out loud after me. Let's go.

"A. A snake. A snake oil. A snake oil salesman. A snake oil salesman. A snake oil salesman. A snake oil salesman. A snake oil salesman. I used to be a snake oil salesman. You used to be a snake oil salesman. He used to be a snake oil salesman. She used to be a snake oil salesman. We used to be snake oil salesmen. They used to be snake oil salesmen."

My kids are laughing in the background, sorry.

"It used to be a snake oil salesman." Good job, guys. Good jo- They're having a bath, that's why. I don't know if you guys can hear this, but my kids are going nuts. My daughter, Joanna's just started laughing, so it's amazing. Sorry for the distraction. All right, so there's some interesting things happening here, right. "A snake oil salesman". The word "A" is going to turn into a schwa, "ə snake. A snake oil salesman".

And there's also going to be a schwa at the end of the word "salesmən". So, whether it's sales-man, as in a sales-man or two sales-men, both of those will get contracted and "man" and "men" will become "mən" with the schwa. So, "a salesman. Two salesman", sounds the same.

So, "I used to be, I used to be", you'll hear this "use' to be, use' to be", the "D" disappears at the end of the word "use". Instead of "used" you say "used, used" and because you've got "to" after it, you'll say, "used tə, used tə. I used to be a snake oil salesman. You used to be a snake oil salesman."

So, there you go, guys. That's it for today. We've just got one little bit left and that is a clip from the movie Boar. So, this is a really cool little horror film that was made in Australia on a sort of small budget. It's got some cool actors in it, including John Jarratt, Steve Bisley and Ernie Dingo, so I really recommend that you go check it out. There's loads of slang in it.

There's loads of sort of authentic Aussies in it. So, yeah, definitely go check it out. But it is a horror film, so probably don't show it to your kids. As usual, I'm going to show you a little clip, I'll show you it twice. See if you can listen and understand what's being said, and better yet, take a pen and some paper and write down what you hear.

See, if you can write down what you hear being said and then go and check either the worksheet that you can download with this episode or the transcript if you're a premium podcast member, because the answer will be in there. Okay. So, are you ready? Let's go, first time.

She's right, he wouldn't last five minutes with you. Mum, that's way too much information. Yeah, you're right. I need a virile man who can handle a cougar like me.

Good job. Good job. So, did you get all of it? That was quite a long one, and I think there's three women in there speaking, so it's going to be a bit of a challenge. But just listen and repeat multiple times, rewind, everything like that. Anyway, time for number two. Let's go.

She's right, he wouldn't last five minutes with you. Mum, that's way too much information. Yeah, you're right. I need a virile man who can handle a cougar like me.

All right, good job, guys. I hope you got that. Go check out the answer in the worksheet or the transcript. Remember, if you want to pick up one of these t-shirts, it's got a little kookaburra getting slapped by a hand with "slap the bird" above it, just go to AussieEnglish.com.au/shirt. I might change these up from time to time and use different designs, so get them while they last.

And lastly, if you want to leave me a question so that you can become part of the Aussie English podcast, right. You'll be on the episode, your audio will be in the episode, and it'll be out there forever, you know, as you contributing to the podcast and being a part of it.

If you want to leave me a question, go to AussieEnglish.com.au/AskPete, and for everything else, just go to the website. You know where it is. Anyway, thanks for joining me, guys, and I will see you next time. Peace!