Transcript of AE 1051 - Expression: A Wild Goose Chase

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. Pete here, welcome to this episode of Aussie English. The number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. This is another expression episode, guys. I'm looking forward to diving into this. It's been a busy week, hanging out with kids, they've been going nanas, they've been going bananas, berserk, everything like that.

We went away on holiday to Apollo Bay, so I'm current- Getting a phone call. Someone from Point Cook, who's going to be calling me from Point Cook? All right. Cancel that, sorry about the interruption, guys. So, what was I saying? Yeah, we went to Apollo Bay. In fact, I'll make sure that I have turned my phone onto silent, so that doesn't happen again.

In fact, I better make sure I've actually turned it onto aeroplane mode because my computer rings. All right, let's get back to it. I'm not going to start this again. This is just part of the experience. So, we went to Apollo Bay recently, which was amazing. Good little trip.

It was less stressful than we were expecting with the two kids. It's only about two hours' drive away. But yeah, that was lots of fun. And I'm currently putting together the little vlog/English lesson videos for the three days that we were down there. We created one showing you the house that we rented, teaching you the vocab of the house, giving you the layout, you know, what to expect from a holiday rental.

And then we did one about beer and we did another one, and I've forgotten what we talked about in that one. Dad and I did two different episodes. But anyway, they'll be up soon enough, and you'll get to check those out, hopefully. Besides that, guys, I've got some new Aussie English merch. I don't know if you can see right here. Slap the bird.

You guys keep asking me, what does "slap the bird" mean? And I just made this up as a way to transition to the Kookaburra singing, laughing when we go into the Aussie English joke, I always just say "slap the bird". So, I decided to create some t-shirts.

Guys, if you want to get these, just go to AussieEnglish.com.au/shirt. Okay. S-H-I-R-T. And you can pick one of these up, it should arrive pretty quickly. I'm using a website called Redbubble, and they seem to have better quality shirts as well as more options for you.

So, go have a look. But yeah, if you grab one, you're supporting Aussie English, what I do here. And I would love to see you wearing these t-shirts wherever you are in the world. So, if you do grab one, make sure to snap a photo of yourself in the t-shirt, send it to me and I'll publish it on my Instagram, if you'd like. Anyway, let's get into today's episode.

So, to begin with, as you've heard recently, we have a little Q and A section. So, I've been recently asking on Instagram, you know, you guys each Monday, do you want to ask me a question about English, Australia, whatever? And it seems like every single week you guys ask me; how do you pronounce flower and flour? Right. Like a flower from a plant and the flour you use to make bread.

So, I get this all the time. We've got one here from Rafa, one from Majid and another one from Nere. They all are, how do you pronounce flower and flour? As you have probably just worked out, they are exactly the same pronunciation.

Flour, I make bread with flour. I went into the garden and picked a flower. They're pronounced exactly the same way. Flower (maybe flour). The interesting thing here to mention is this is not necessarily the case in all dialects of English.

In fact, I was recently doing a little, I don't know, I went down a rabbit hole on YouTube and came across some Appalachian English. This is from the east part of the United States in the mountainous regions of places like, I think, Louisiana.

Correct me if I'm wrong, guys. But they pronounce it as flour and flower, I think. I'll play some of the audio so that you can hear it. But I was astonished. I'd never heard those two words pronounced differently, so I thought that was epic, that was awesome.

When I was a kid and carry a 25 pound polka flower home- That's flour, by the way, not flour.

Anyway, time to get into this week's news story. All right, so this week in the United States, a wild Canadian goose was being treated by vets after it developed a rather significant limp. The goose, nicknamed Arnold, had been found limping around a pond and it was taken to the New England Wildlife Centre in Massachusetts to undergo a check-up.

That's a difficult word, Massachusetts. Wonder if you guys can say that. The staff discovered two fractures inside poor little Arnold's foot, which threatened his survival. As a result, they prepped the goose for surgery, and they were surprised to hear a faint tapping on the clinic door.

It turned out that Arnold's girlfriend had tracked him down to the clinic and decided to stand by the window and watch the entire procedure. She was agitated that she couldn't get inside to see him as he was being operated on. She remained there the entire time throughout the procedure, watching the people work and never moving away from the doorway.

On seeing her desperation, the staff actually decided to let Arnold recover from the surgery just by the door where he was close to his mate, and she immediately calmed down. Arnold will need several weeks of follow up treatment after surgery but should be as right as rain to go back into the wild with his girlfriend no worse for wear.

So, that was an incredible story, guys, and I had to share that. And it's obviously tied in with today's expression "a wild goose chase". And you may hear this quite often as "to go on a wild goose chase", but we'll get into that shortly. All right, guys, slap the bird. Let's get into the joke.

All right. So, you guys are going to hate me. This is another amazing dad joke, but I couldn't help myself. I was searching for goose jokes or geese jokes if you want to use the plural there. These are irregular nouns in English goose, a goose, several geese.

So, yeah, I was looking up a goose joke, and here's what I found. Hold your laughter and hold your applause. In what language does a goose speak? In what language does a goose speak? You ready? Portugeese. Portugeese. Get it? The word Portuguese, Português, a lingua do Brasil, A Portugal.

The language of Brazil and Portugal, it's Portuguese with a Z sound. But obviously the pun here is on that word "Portuguese" and the plural of goose, geese. So, in what language does a goose speak? Portugeese. All right, let's get into the expression. So, the expression is "a wild goose chase, to go on a wild goose chase". Let's break down the different words in this phrase.

So, you'll know "a", or "a", right, the indefinite article, a goose, some geese. It's singular. "Wild". "Wild" is living or growing in the natural environment. So, if an animal or environment is not domesticated or not cultivated, it is "wild". There are wild kangaroos that live in the Aussie bush as opposed to, say, those kept in a zoo or as pets. A "goose". A "goose" is a large water bird with a long neck, short legs, webbed feet.

That's where you've got the connection between your digits on your feet or your hands, webbed toes, web fingers. So, he has webbed feet and a short, broad bill. Generally, geese are larger than ducks and have longer necks and shorter bills.

So, they do look quite a bit like ducks, but they're kind of like halfway between a duck and a swan. So, the farmer has a lot of ducks and geese on his farm. Remember, the plural of goose is geese. No need to chuck an "S" on the end of that. G-E-E-S-E, geese. And lastly, a "chase" is the act of pursuing someone or something.

So, the police got called to a car "chase" or the cheetah "chases" the gazelle on the Serengeti plains, right, to "chase". So, what is the expression "a wild goose chase" mean? Right, is it just about a goose that's wild getting chased? Or maybe a goose that's wild chasing you? No, "a wild goose chase" is a foolish and hopeless search for or pursuit of something unattainable.

So, "a wild goose chase" is like a frustrating enterprise, a frustrating thing that you undergo that involves wasting a lot of time and energy trying to achieve something, well, trying to find something, and then obviously having nothing to show for it. All right. So, where did this come from? The idiom "Wild Goose Chase" was first written down by William Shakespeare in the play Romeo and Juliet in the year 1595.

How crazy is that? Quote, "nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase, I have done, for thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of thy wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole five." Interestingly, the term "wild goose chase" was first used to mean a type of horse race. In a wild goose chase horse race, the lead rider galloped across the open countryside in an erratic pattern.

Subsequent riders were to follow at different intervals and had to follow the exact pattern of the lead rider, the idea of geese flying in a formation following one another. The exact rules of a wild geese chase are unclear, but it seems reasonable to assume the object is to overtake the leader.

So, that was an excerpt from Grammarist.com, go check them out to learn more about these sorts of expressions and where they come from. So, let's go through three examples of how I would use "a wild goose chase" in day-to-day life. Example number one. Our daughter is allergic to something at the moment, but we're kind of finding it hard to work out what it is that she has an allergy to.

So, imagine my wife finds some specific brand or formula of milk for babies online and tells me, you know, I need to go and try and track this down at the local store. So, the online shop has none of it left. I end up going to Woollies, there's nothing there. I go to Coles, can't find anything. I go to the IGA supermarket, there's nothing there. I never end up finding it.

So, when I come home, I say, you know, "Kel, you've sent me on a wild goose chase. I've gone on this journey looking for this thing, trying to obtain it, and have nothing to show for it. It was a wild goose chase."

Example number two. Imagine that a bank has been robbed by a bunch of thieves, right. The cops get called, the police. They go to the bank; they rock up there. But there's no robbers to be seen. They have disappeared into thin air. They've fled on foot, right. They've run off. So, the cops have to try and get in their cars, drive around, spread out, try and find them, track them down.

Maybe they see them. They pile out of their car. They chase them down alleys, over fences, into gardens. But eventually the thieves get the better of them and just completely disappear and get away, right. They get away with everything.

So, the cops never end up tracking them down, instead, they've been led on "a wild goose chase". So, they've been going all over the place trying to capture these villains, these thieves. They have nothing to show for it in the end. It was just "a wild goose chase".

Example number three. So, the other day, the wind was blowing so crazily strong around our house it was going nuts. And the guinea pigs' hutch where we keep the guinea pigs, the hutch is that kind of little wooden box house that they live in. It blew over. And I only noticed in the morning when I looked out the window and obviously was like, what the hell, the guinea pigs' hutch is on its side?

And the guinea pigs were running around all over the place. So, I went out into the yard and had the hardest time of my life trying to capture these guys. They were running around the grass, hiding under things, running along the fence.

I was terrified they were going to get through a hole in the fence and just disappear for good. Eventually, my wife came out and she's the one who caught them. But I was sent on "a wild goose chase". I went on "a wild goose chase" trying to capture the pigs, get the guinea pigs and put them back in their hutch. It was "a wild goose chase".

So, hopefully now, guys, you understand the expression, "a wild goose chase". You can be sent on "a wild goose chase". You can go on "a wild goose chase". It is a foolish and hopeless search for or pursuit of something unobtainable. So, the idea being that you try really hard to get something, to capture something, to obtain it, going different places, putting in a lot of effort and time, but then have nothing to show for it ultimately.

It's "a wild goose chase". So, as usual, let's go through a little pronunciation exercise here. So, this is a listen and repeat exercise. Try and find somewhere quiet, away from people where you're going to feel confident speaking out loud. Listen to me, say these words and phrases, and then repeat them after me as a sort of shadowing exercise. Okay. So, are you ready? Let's go.

"A. A wild. A wild goose. A wild goose chase. A wild goose chase. A wild goose chase. A wild goose chase. A wild goose chase. I went on a wild goose chase. You went on a wild goose chase. He went on a wild goose chase. She went on a wild goose chase. We went on a wild goose chase. They went on a wild goose chase. It went on a wild goose chase.

Great job, guys, great job. So, there's some interesting stuff going on here, you can say "a wild goose chase". But if we link this all together, the D at the end of "wild" becomes muted because there's a consonant straight after it. So, you'll hear "a wil∅ goose chase, a wild goose chase". You can release it. You may also hear "a wild goose chase" where it's kind of lightly released. "A wild goose chase".

But you may also hear "a wil∅ goose chase, a wild goose chase". Just do what feels most natural to you. The last thing I want to mention here is the interesting thing that happens with the word "went". So, "went" obviously ends with a hard T sound. "Went". But there's an interesting little rule that happens when a word ends with "nt" or a syllable ends with "nt", and there's another vowel that comes after it.

You're not going to hear the T. Instead, you'll hear "when, when", like, when are you going to do that? It sounds similar to "when", okay, or exactly the same, actually. So, instead of hearing, "I went on a wild goose chase", you'll hear I wen∅ on a wild goose chase".

The reason this happens is because the position in the mouth to make an N sound and a T sound, at least the first half of the T sound before you release it is the same position. The tongue is touching the roof of the mouth, blocking the air from coming out, "went", right.

Because you're going straight into a vowel sound and you release that T sound, you're actually not saying the T and you just release the N. So, "wenn'on, wenn'on, wenn'on, I wenn'on a wild goose chase. You wenn'on a wild goose chase." It sounds a bit weird if you were to say, "I went on a wild goose chase" because you break the sentence up. "I went on a wild goose chase. I went on a wild goose chase."

So, that's it for the pronunciation exercise, guys. The last little thing here, as we've been doing recently, is listening to a clip from a TV show or film from Australia and testing your listening comprehension of some quickly spoken, naturally spoken Australian English. So, I'm going to play this clip twice. It's from the movie Wolf Creek 2.

This is a really good movie if you like sort of horror movie style films or TV shows. Effectively, the story is that backpackers get kidnapped, murdered or escape from a psychopath in the Australian outback, right. He's out there effectively just looking for people to kill and do other horrible things to.

So, anyway, I'm going to play this clip for you once. See if you can understand everything that's happening. You know, get a piece of paper, see if you can write down what you hear. Pause it. You can rewind if you need. But listen to it and see if you can do it without reading the answer. If you want the answer, it'll be in the transcript or in the worksheet that you can download with this episode. Okay. So, here it is the first time.

Get a bit stuck on the big words every now and then, but you know, yeah, I can read pretty good.

Good job. All right, time for number two. You ready? Let's go.

Get a bit stuck on the big words every now and then, but you know, yeah, I can read pretty good.

All right. So, that's it for today, guys. Don't forget if you want to check out these t-shirts, go to AussieEnglish.com.au/shirt. And if you want the full transcripts, the video lessons, the other bonuses and everything like that related to these expression episodes, as well as every other episode on the Aussie English podcast. Be sure to sign up for the Premium podcast at AussieEnglish.com.au/podcast.

Thanks for joining me, guys, and I'll see you mob next time. Catch ya!