Transcript of AE 1394 - The Goss: What Uniquely Aussie Things do Foreigns Never Understand?

G'day, you mob! Pete here, and this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen. And we talk about the week's news, whether locally Down Under here in Australia or non locally overseas in other parts of the world, okay.

And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right. If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss.

So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English. So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills.

In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at AussieEnglish.com.au, where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time.

Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

Dad.

Pete!

You jumped the gun. You already opened the can.

I know, I know. I missed my cue.

He's impatient. Guys. He's thirsty. Don't worry. It's coke today. We're still early morning.

Yeah, it's too early in the morning for beers. It's not.

We changed locations. You guys are probably hearing a slightly different reverb.

Yes. It's a bit echoey in here with the cathedral ceiling.

Yes. So I thought we could do an episode on, what are some things that. Are you- what is it here? Like, what's something uniquely Aussie that you think foreigners will never understand? Before I go through the comments, I guess I'll read out the post. This was one on Reddit. In the subreddit Australian. So the person writes, "I was chatting with a mate, from overseas the other day who couldn't wrap his head around the concept of magpies being a genuine public safety threat. Got me thinking. There are so many things. There are so many little things that make Australia, well, Australia, could be cultural, food related, slang, or just weird daily stuff we don't even question anymore. So I'm curious. What something you reckon only Aussies get and everyone else just looks confused when you try to explain it."

Yeah.

A lot of these things, it's hard because. Sorry to interrupt you. A lot of these things, it's. Well, you're not really going to think of them because they're just..

Because. Yeah. If you don't think of them. Yeah. It's just. Yeah. What do we take for granted? Well, taken for granted means I'm not going to think of it, but yeah, off the top of my head and it's probably not the rest of the world, I think, English and Irish would probably, and Scottish. So British people, although the Irish would feel insulted by that.

Well, the Northern Irish wouldn't.

Yeah. No. Exactly. Have a similar sense of humour. But Australian sense of humour is very self-deprecating and ironically or sarcastically insulting.

To themselves or to others?

Both.

Or both.

But that self-deprecating sense of humour, a lot of, certainly North Americans and Europeans just don't understand.

Well, it's not just them. It's funny you mention that. I have private lessons with some Asian students at the moment, particularly. Well, all of them in terms of this aspect. But Chinese people have been talking to recently some Chinese women, and they were like, how do I, how do I, have small talk at work and be a bit more informal and friendly? And part of the advice that I gave them was quite often, just make fun of yourself.

Yeah.

You know, like, she was saying, like, I get nervous when I talk on the phone with colleagues or, you know, when I talk around the office because I've got an accent or I say the wrong thing and I'm like, just make fun of yourself for doing it. You don't have to. It doesn't have to be serious. And we know you're joking, but if you say something like, oh, I'm just a dumb foreigner, you know, I'm, you know, if you use that self-deprecating humour to kind of break the ice.

And Australians not only get it but appreciate it because it's just sort of an underlying the way we interact.

Well that makes it a friendlier thing, right? Like it's, as an Australian, as soon as you hang out with someone and they use that kind of self-deprecation or they they make fun of themselves, they point something out that's obvious but unsaid, you know? You know, I'm some fat old bloke or something like that that you might say to someone, all of a sudden the it becomes relaxed because you're kind of like, oh, this person's not taking themselves too seriously. I can talk more openly. I can be silly. I can be myself if I do something, if I make a mistake or do something that would otherwise be embarrassing in a very formal situation, this person's not going to be taking it seriously, and I can make fun of myself. And it's a friendly kind of environment.

Yeah. And I think the flip side of that is because that of that self-deprecation, we also don't get insulted by what other people's- other people would look at and go, oh, geez, why would you say that? I mean, how many times in your life- and this will be in the thousands, have you heard somebody say, you idiot, to someone when they do something silly?

Or say something, yeah.

Yeah. And a lot of, a lot of other cultures would just sort of go, oh, I can't, you know, that was a bit stupid, but I'm not going to say anything.

Yeah.

Whereas the first thing an Australian would turn around and say, you idiot!

Or worse. Yeah. Good job dickhead.

Yeah, exactly.

Well done! Well done, numb nuts.

Numb nuts. Hey, knucklehead, what do you think you're doing? Yeah.

Butterfingers. What's the other one? Taxi!

Taxi! Yeah.

That's a classic.

That came from a TV commercial years ago.

Was it? Well, I just imagine it's an American thing that we've gotten, but it's the taxis used for. Like, when someone's clumsy and drops something or does something. Usually as well, when they're. Especially when they're drinking alcohol.

Yeah.

The idea, I guess, being that you're out with friends and they gotten so drunk that you need to call a taxi so they can go home.

Yeah, they can't drive.

And so you're making the joke that if someone, like, if you got up now and suddenly dropped..

A drink or dropped the iPad, it'd be like, Taxi!

Taxi? Yeah, but there that, that was reinforced. Well, the humour was pre-existing because. Because the ad wouldn't have made sense otherwise, but it was reinforced with this commercial about drink driving years and years ago about, you know, this this guy sitting in a pub and he turns to a girl and says, let me drive you home, show you perfect control. And he then stands up and knocks his drink over. And the whole line was, Get a taxi, you know?

Yeah.

So.

No, but that is, that is such a good one, I think. And learning that, especially with a lot of my students from overseas, it's one of those things I take for granted and just do and make, you know, quite often. And I'll use it when I'm asking them questions about their culture or their language or whatever. I'll be like, I'm a dumb Westerner. What do I know?

Yeah.

You know, and I'd rather hear it from you or whatever. But my initial, you'll, I'll notice when I'm thinking about these things. My initial first thing is to insult myself in front of you..

Yes.

So that you feel comfortable and relax. And that's, you know, I don't. And they may not even feel that way as foreigners because they're not culturally programmed to.

Exactly.

But other Australians would, in that situation.

Yeah. I remember when I taught at the Curie Institute, an institute at Deakin University, which.

You wanna explain what that is?

Yeah, it was a, the sort of broad grouping of Aboriginal people in south eastern Australia. And the institute was set up at Deakin University, where I was already working to establish education programs, higher education programs for Aboriginal people.

Yeah.

Because often people who are living in community don't have the opportunity of a typical sort of university program where you're attending university every day or 3 or 4 days a week. And so they would do intensive programs. So you would come and you'd do an entire subject in three weeks, so you'd be there for eight hours a day for three weeks and finish a subject. And I remember in the first or second class, talking to people and, talking to the students and just said, hey, I'm just a dumb white guy, you know? And they all laughed. And it just, it just lowered the tension in that, you know, who who are you? This, you know, this old white man coming in and teaching us. But but I said, oh, I'm just a dumb white guy. I need to understand your situation.

Yeah. You sort of recognise that difference and mention it. And address it. They're kind of like, oh, yeah.

We can treat you like the dumb white guy now, and you're not gonna. And you're not going to be offended.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it is funny. It is funny those how important that is. And I think too, it's a, it it's related to our Australian dislike of pomposity..

Oh yeah.

Or people pretending to be more important than they really are, or that those certain people who want to make everything way more formal than it should be.

Yeah.

Like, yeah, it's. It's. Yeah, it's really funny. I remember I had a student from Pakistan, a young kid, and he kept calling me sir, and I was like, dude, you got to stop. Like, I'm just some dumb Aussie dude teaching English online. Like, you don't have to call me sir, mate. I'm not. I haven't been knighted. I'm just your average bloke. And he's like, it took him ages to get that out.

That's just part of that, that culture. And it's the same in, in the southern part of the United States.

I know.

Is that the sir and ma'am, you know, and particularly to to people who are older than you, not necessarily as a respective authority or whatever, but anybody who is older, and it'd be a few years older. It's not like a generation older.

Do you think that a big part of that, though, is gun culture? And like the fact that everyone has so well armed in the US that you need to be polite?

No, no, I don't think so. I think I think it I think it's just it's one of those things that's just, you know, the culture is beaten into people. Metaphorically. When, yeah. And I've known people who call their father, sir.

It's so funny, though, because for me, it seems so superficial and, like, what would you say, ingenuine, when people use that kind of thing? It's just not disingenuous, right? It's just it feels like you don't actually consider me above you as a sir. You know, like as madam, as sir.

And they don't.

Yeah, but.

But they..

But it's not disingenuous because it's just built in.

Yeah.

It's like, you know, how often do you say g'day.

Oh well.

All the time. Yeah. And and so it's just that your automatic response. So it's that how you address someone.

It is so funny though. That big difference. Like I would immediately, I would immediately feel uncomfortable if I think I went to America and people kept calling me sir everywhere.

Yeah.

I think I would have a common habit of just being like, don't call me that.

Yeah.

Don't do that. I'm not American. Please just treat me like..

Like an old friend of mine who used to- when McDonald's first came in Australia, and they brought in that American service model and mentality of, you know, and 'would you like fries with that' and 'have a nice day'. And every time they addressed him at the end of have a Nice Day, he'd say, don't tell me what to do! And all these Australian kids would just laugh. But if you said that to an American, they'd go, what? They'd feel like, what have I done wrong?

What is that movie again? Is it like a. Ah. Is it an army movie with Mel Gibson in it? I think it must be from the early 2000s. And there's like, a lieutenant or captain or general or something who's constantly walking past these young.

No, it's The Sergeant.

Is it?

Yeah.

And they keep saying to him, good morning, sir. And he's like, who are you? The fucking weatherman?

Exactly. And don't call me sir.

Yeah.

I work for a living!

All right, so some of the ones.

Yeah, I was going to give you another one.

Oh yeah?

And that is our. Well, we sort of ignore, actively ignore, but not passively, venomous snakes and spiders. And a lot of people from overseas when they come to Australia are paranoid about them.

Yeah.

And, you know, you could spend your entire life in Australia and never see a venomous snake.

Many people do.

I know. If you wanted to find. If you want to find one. Even from here, I could probably find one in an hour.

Yeah.

But. But you've got to go out of your way. But at the same time, we just have built into our behaviour that you just don't do certain things. You don't walk in long grass in summer, you know.

Or if you go and you have Gators..

We have Gators on or..

To protect your legs.

You don't you don't wander around the park..

You don't put your hands where you can't see them when you go to the rock pools around here in the ocean, because there's blue ring..

Blue ring octopus, which are venomous. So.

Exactly. And you won't even know you've been bitten.

No. You stop breathing.

You stop breathing. Exactly.

Yeah, there's a bunch of those things, right, that are inbuilt. I know, and the same with the spiders. I've just. There's. I saw a meme or, you know, real going around on Instagram that was like, some woman sitting in her house and there's a huge spider on the wall, and she's like, she turns and she's like, oh, oh, Steve, how's it going, buddy? Taking care of the flies, you know. And it's that kind of like, yeah, it's funny. And then another one that was showing some electrician had opened up someone's, what is it called? The thing on the side of the house with the fuse?

Oh, yeah. The fuse box.

The fuse box. And there was like a redback spider in there that was tiny and a massive huntsman. And he was like, foreigners will never understand why Australians do not give a shit about that huge, freaky looking spider. And in fact, sort of see it lovingly because it's like, oh yeah, awesome, mate. And a terrified of the tiny little black spider because it's, you know, deadly to humans.

Exactly.

So it is interesting that awareness of of native animals and things that don't freak us out and others that do.

Yeah. Whereas, you know, you go, I go. Yeah. Well, used to go to North America a lot. Haven't been for about ten years. But walking in, you know, go bushwalking in Australia and I have no problem anywhere because you just know how to avoid snakes is the big thing. Whereas you're walking through the forests in Canada and you see cougars, bears..

Moose.

Moose. Exactly what am I going to come across now?

I just never understand how Americans can be shit scared of tiny spiders in Australia and venomous snakes.

Yeah.

And yet have this nonchalant camping thing in the US with fucking bears.

I know, and that's a gag I always used to say. Yeah, our things will bite you, your things will eat you.

And chase you down, actually hunt you! The snakes will bite you if you step on them.

Exactly.

They can't escape. And even half the time then they're not going to inject venom.

No.

So you've got to really go out of your way. Whereas the bears are like, if you come too close, they're hungry. And it's, you know.

Yeah. And if they, if it's a sow with babies. Oh yeah.

I know, I remember when we went to the US, right? And we were driving around, or maybe in Canada near Banff, and people getting out of the car to see black bears crossing the road, and you're like, lock the doors, what are you doing? And they had cubs. You would just be like, are you guys cooked?

Yeah, exactly. Like maniacs.

These things, not only are they potentially going to eat you, but they're going to kill you because you're a danger to their cubs.

Yeah, like I remember, I remember one spot we were there, and I was, I was out of the car, but close to it and photographing the, the bear cubs that were like 100m away.

Yeah.

And one of the Rangers came, drove past, and he just said, look, you look like you know what you're doing and you're okay, but you being out of your car just encourages everybody else to do the same thing. So can you probably. Can you please get back in your car?

The thing I feel like I remember from when we went to the US, there were always Japanese tourists that seemingly got way too close to the bears. And I don't know what. I don't know if it's like in Japan. They have bears.

They do.

And maybe they're they're less dangerous, but it seemed like they were always somewhat like, oh, we'll just walk straight up and it'll be fine with our cameras. And I remember just being like a little kid just going..

Yeah, you're gonna die.

I'm not getting out of the car!

Exactly.

Like. Good grief.

Yeah.

All right, so some of the comments here. Chicken burgers. Not exactly unique to us, but, hell, it riles up the Yanks.

You can't call it a burger if it's not made out of beef.

Yeah. And then the Golden Gaytime.

Oh, really? That came up?

Probably just because it's called Gaytime.

The Gaytime? Yeah, but it's also, it's a unique- it's an ice cream for those, you know, it's on a stick.

Is it covered in cashews or peanuts?.

It's covered in nuts. I think it's probably peanuts or almonds or something.

Yeah.

But it's a sort of butterscotch and mild chocolate and. Yeah, it's a weird one because I've never had anything like it anywhere else. Whereas your standard sort of ice cream, you know, the sort of trumpet type things with ice cream and chocolate and nuts and things you can buy anywhere. And other other sort of icy pole. Things you can buy anywhere but Golden Gaytimes.

I've never had one!

Really?

`No, never had one.

You either love them or hate them.

Yeah, I'll have to try one. The kids had a box of them the other day in the fridge.

Yeah.

I don't know, there's something about just the caramel and just nuts by itself. I was just like, there's no chocolate.

They're pretty good.

Into it. It's funny, one of the person, one of the people here replied, I remember my friend from Germany calling her mum to tell her she'd had a Gaytime. All right.

Excuse me!

I live in England now, but grew up in Australia. I always avoid walking through long grass in case of snakes. Yep. So there you go. There's that one. Whereas telling that to English people made them confused.

Yeah.

I think they've only got, like, one venomous snake.

It's not very venomous.

Viper. Something small. Naming spiders that take up residence in your house. That's true. What happened the other day? We had, like, a daddy longlegs. A massive one above the shower.

Yeah.

And the kids were in there, and they're like, That's Greg! That's Greg! Hi, Greg! I'm like, I hadn't even taught them to do that, but they just started. There's Greg! There's Greg!

That's a classic.

I'm like, he looks like a Greg, doesn't he?

Yeah.

A single slice of bread being sufficient for a Bunnings sausage.

Yeah, well. And that that the other one that comes to mind with that is a sandwich. For us a sandwich is made out of two slices of bread. Sliced bread.

Sliced bread. Yeah.

Whereas in the US.

And Europe.

And Canada as well.

Europe as well.

Europe, it's a sandwich is basically anything inside any form of bread.

But it's usually a larger kind of bread like you would think they would call them subway sandwiches from Subway.

Yeah. Which we would call a bread roll.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, a lump of bread cut in half.

Yeah.

And have stuff thrown in it.

If it's not square or triangular.

And it's..

Flat.

It's almost like. And you use the chicken burger example, they would call that a chicken fillet sandwich.

Fillet.

Fillet sandwich.

They would say fillet.

And yeah, so a burger is not a beef sandwich?

I know.

In my mind the burger is the bread. The fact that it's it's usually bread with the meat inside that's been barbecued or something with cheese and stuff in there, you know, and lettuce and everything. But it's like, it's kind of a shaped thing I have in my head.

Pete's doing this visual thing..

I'm holding my hands out. Like. Like you're holding a burger, right?

Yeah.

I don't have a, it must have this one ingredient. Like you can have a fish burger, a veggie burger, a chicken burger.

The thing is, though, that hamburger is that, you know, the minced meat cooked on a grill.

Yeah.

That's a hamburger. And then we just throw all the other stuff around it. So I understand that reluctance to call anything else a burger.

It's funny, these products, like there's a whole bunch of people mentioning things like Milo or Vegemite.

Yeah.

So those are big ones. But I guess, you know, any country has that sort of thing where it's like unique foods where you would try it and be like, ooh, this is strange.

Yeah. Or just, why would you do that?

Mhm. What's this one? When I was 11 years old and had recently moved from New Zealand to Australia, I remember telling my parents in the evening about my commute home from school that day. I think this bird must have been drunk because it was flying erratically and really low and collided with the back of my head three times whilst I was cycling across the park.

Magpie? Or magpie lark?

I then had swooping magpies explained to me. Yeah, that's probably one the fact that I'd be more afraid of magpies than snakes. I think, you know, especially like just taking out my eyes or something.

Well magpies are just everywhere.

Yeah. And they'll just fuck you up out of nowhere. The whole thing. You can't. They don't attack you when you're looking at you, when you're looking at them. They come from behind usually, and just suddenly bang or just peck, you know? And that would freak me out a lot more than than a snake, I think. All right. Apparently saying 'soz' is uniquely Australian. 'Soz'.

Yeah, well, we do all sorts of things.

That's just 'sorry'.

'Sorry', yeah.

'Sorry' as in 'tomoz'. Yeah. Which, funnily, nobody ever says 'to moz' T O M O Z. But it's written as short for. It's a contraction of 'tomorrow'.

It's like BRB. No one says BRB.

I know, but we say 'soz'.

Or LOL.

Or LOL. Yeah. But LOL is okay because.

ROFL?

Yeah.

Chicken salt is another one here.

Chicken salt.

And the rest of the world is missing out. The next person, Preach! So if you get a fish and chip shops, get chicken salt. I don't even know what it is. Is there's chicken in it?

It's it's it's..

MSG?

Yeah. Well I'm sure there is MSG. Well there used to be.

Yeah.

Because it's chicken stock.

Yeah okay.

Yeah. Ground chicken stock with salt.

Oh man. It's so good. Especially on chips. It's one of those funny things, isn't it? You'll get chicken salt. It's this yellowy kind of salt thing that you'll get. And it's always really good on chips. It's a bit weird if you have it on the other stuff.

Yeah.

Like if you have it on fish.

Yeah, it's only, it's only for chips.

The chips is really good. Being barefoot outside of the house. That's probably again, these are sort of culture shock things that people wouldn't get. It is funny how that that one comes up quite a bit. And for me it's like it's usually associated with being close to the beach and going, I would if I'm going to the beach and I'm or I'm at the beach and I'm in bare feet, I might then go to the shops and just not bother putting my shoes and socks on, because I've got sandy feet and then I'm going to walk around, you know, and just be like, ah, fuck it, I'll clean my feet when I get home and have a shower. But if I was in the middle of nowhere, like in the sticks or something in the in the outback, I don't think I'd be running around in bare feet just randomly.

But also. But it's not just the running around in bare feet. It's the the beach culture too, is that we're so used to it living in beach communities that I don't think I've ever been anywhere else in the world and seen people walking around a supermarket in bare feet. But you see it all the time.

They must be- so many people must come here and be like, God damn, these homeless people are really well dressed!

Well, they're very casual. Yeah.

It's funny, there's the next one is like shaking your shoes out before you put them on in summer.

Oh, yeah. Bang the shoes together.

There's a video I saw of some guy doing it on a mining site in Queensland, and he's just like, get a load of these cunts. And he's shaking his shoe at. And six cane toads fell out! And he's like, six cunts in my fucking shit! And all these people in the background are just pissing themselves like.

Yeah mostly it's for spiders and scorpions. But.

Don't leave them outside!

Yeah.

If I was living in those places, I would not be leaving my shoes outside. And let alone on their side for something to get in.

But if you're camping, you don't want to have your smelly old wet boots in your, in your tent. So.

Put them in the car!

..In the outside. But but..

Hang them from a tree, I don't know.

Spiders can get up trees as can scorpions. But but yeah it's just classic I. I still do it when my shoes are inside. You just bang them together, tip them from outside.

The other thing here, tradies making top dollar. As much as doctors, engineers and lawyers.

Yeah, which isn't actually true but.

Well yeah I mean..

It's a myth.

But.

It's a myth.

Ah, it depends! It probably depends on the person.

There'd be people running..

Or an engineer.

There would be people running plumbing companies, you know, employing other plumbers. You know, as an example, that might make as much as a lawyer or a doctor, but your average plumber or electrician or carpenter or brickie or whatever is not going to be earning that sort of money. But I think they do earn more money comparatively than the same jobs in a lot of other countries. So.

All right, I think that's probably enough, Dad.

Yeah.

What's the other one? Probably drop bears, right?

Oh, yeah.

The whole joke with that, that we have with Drop Bears and it's like this, we all learn it. You know, growing up, you hear about drop bears and then you get that people. Australians will make this joke that there are these carnivorous koalas that live in the forests. And now they'll drop out of a tree and eat you.

Yeah.

And that we all then have this kind of, like, agreed upon prank that we'll talk about them to foreigners as if it's a real thing. And it's usually you just do it half heartedly. Sometimes you do it seriously. But then usually the gag's over pretty quickly.

I don't know where it came from. But I, I first heard it when I was a child, not a young child, like, you know, teenager, early teenager. And I reckon it probably came out around that 1960s. And I think for me, certainly I first heard it from people who were in the scouts.

Mhm.

And I think it came from that sort of scouting camping thing of, you know, telling stories to the, the new scouts when you go out camping and trying to frighten them and stuff. So, I think it came from that. And then it just became a general Australian thing that everybody knows about Drop bears.

Yeah. I remember when we were doing, when I was doing my master's degree and we were doing,the field work capturing goannas and, like.

Far more dangerous than koalas!

Oh, man. Yeah, but we had this American guy with us and we were joking around about them, and and he believed us. And I remember being like, you're a fucking biologist from the US. How- surely you would have heard about these animals.

Yeah, exactly.

Really? Really. Like. Are you serious, dude?

Well, the irony is, in North America, they have them!

Yeah, exactly.

They've got black bears that climb trees! Yeah.

All right, well, hopefully you enjoyed this one, guys. If you've got any others, you'll have to let us know. And we'll see you in the next one!

Bye!

See ya!