Transcript of AE 1402 - Expression: Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

You ever have that one mate who can't stop bringing up old drama? Maybe they start talking about that fight from last Christmas. Well, that time you embarrass yourself at a party five years ago when you got really drunk and you're thinking, Mate, drop it. Please. Because everything is calm now. And, you know, if you start talking about it again, it's going to cause trouble.

Well, there's a perfect expression for that! One that's been around for hundreds of years. And today we're going to learn what it means and how to use it.

G'day you mob. Welcome to Aussie English. I'm 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 flippin' 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! I'm your host, Pete. Welcome back to the Aussie English Podcast, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. I'm about to sneeze. Give me one second. It always comes at the wrong time. I leave this stuff in here, guys. So you get a bit of my personality and you understand not everything is perfect.

Not everything goes to plan. I could totally restart and record that all again. Where's the fun in that? Where's the fun in that? It would just be the same as everything else, you know, squeaky clean, perfect perfection.

Anyway, welcome to the podcast, guys. I hope you're having a good one. I hope you're not being affected by allergies like I currently am, evidently.

So, today we're going to learn the expression "to let sleeping dogs lie". "To let sleeping dogs lie".

The structure of the episode is going to be that I will give you a joke. A couple of doggone funny warm ups, a word by word breakdown. So the meanings of each of the words in the expression, we'll talk about the meaning and the origin of this idiom.

I'll give you a whole bunch of real life examples that you can sink your teeth into, right? Relatable Aussie scenarios where this expression could be used.

We'll go through a speaking exercise so you can practice your pronunciation, and then we'll finish up with a bit of an Aussie fact about dogs, okay?

Before we get started, don't forget you can download a free PDF worksheet that goes with today's episode. So if you're working on your English, you want to get all the definitions of the phrases you know you want to see the exercise that we do in the pronunciation speaking section, all that jazz.

Click the link in the description. You'll be able to download that free PDF, and if you want the full transcript for today's episode so you can read and listen at the same time, sign up to the Premium podcast membership at AussieEnglish.com.au/podcast.

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So again, if you want to join the Premium Podcast membership, go to AussieEnglish.com.au/podcast. Anyway, enough of that. Slap the bird and let's get it to laugh and we'll get into the joke!

All right, so let's kick things off with some paw-sitive good humour. Do you see what I did there? "paw", "paw-sitive", right. Like a dog's "paw". You're getting two jokes for the price of one today. Okay. No complaining.

All right, so here's the actual joke. "What's a dog's favourite musical instrument?" So think about a dog. If a dog had to play a musical instrument. Hmm. Which instrument would it choose?

"What's a dog's favourite instrument?" "The trom-bone!"

Did you get it? The trom-bone, right, because dogs like bones.

Oh, God. You know, it's so hard. It's really hard to find one liners that are actually really, really clever. They're always dad jokes. They're always silly. They're always a little bit, er. But hopefully you enjoy these. And I have had a few people message me saying they really enjoy these jokes and that they go out there and tell people at work or, you know, say it to their family or friends or whatever in Australia.

So I absolutely love that, guys. I hope you're enjoying them. And, you know, it's the it's the dad's sense of humour. It's a dad joke type thing. It's funny because it's stupid. Okay. So, "What's a dog's favourite instrument?" "The trom-bone", right. The trom-bone.

[That was good wasn't it? It was good for a bit of a giggle anyway.]

Alright, so let's get into the words of the expression and break them down. There's nothing too complicated today, but it's just, you know, good little exercise to try and learn a bit of vocab and dive in a little deeper. So, "to let sleeping dogs lie".

"To let", this is a verb to allow, to permit something. You let that thing happen, occur. You allow it, you permit it. "Let me give you a hand."

"Sleeping", this is an adjective. The present participle of "to sleep". And it describes someone or something that is asleep, right. Asleep, right. That's probably how I sleep. Snoring. So, "The sleeping baby didn't make a sound."

And when I sleep, I make a lot of sound. At least I'm told I never hear it. But my wife always tells me I snore. And my kids have woken me up a few times saying, Shut up, Dad!

"Dogs", I'm sure you know what a dog is. A dog is the animal, right? The, the pet. "The neighbour's dogs were barking all night."

And lastly, "to lie"." To lie". This is a verb. Not to tell an untruth, but here it means to rest in a flat position or remain still, right? You might lie down on the ground, and in this idiom it means to leave things as they are lying down, right? Don't disturb them. "She likes to go to the beach and lie down in the sun." "To lie".

"To lie down". It's often in phrasal verbs,. Okay, so you will hear, "Lie down." I guess that's probably about it, right? "Lie down." You wouldn't 'lie up'. You 'sit up'. So, 'lie down'.

"Lie down" is probably the only phrasal verb, okay. All right.

So the expression: "to let sleeping dogs lie".

If you wake up a sleeping dog, what's likely to happen? You probably get bit, right. Or at the very least, it might bark at you. You know, you you pat it or something, you startle it while it's asleep and it might be like [Pete make a barking sound], it might be angry and bark at you, or it might bite you, God forbid.

But the figurative thing here, the figurative meaning of this expression "to let sleeping dogs lie" is to avoid bringing up old arguments. Because you might be verbally bitten, right?

You might cause new trouble, you might upset people. So you "let sleeping dogs lie" in order to avoid raising old issues, conflicts, sensitive topics, that may or may not be resolved or forgotten, right.

It's kind of like, um, "pouring salt in the wound". It's sort of similar to that expression, "let sleeping dogs lie". It's usually advice given to people saying, you know, let it go. Don't talk about it. Don't mention it. You know, let it, let it go. Don't mention it.

So this proverb is very old. It goes back to at least the 14th century. Its earliest known English form appears in Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. I have no idea what that is.

In the 1380s, where he writes, "It is nought good a slepyng hound to wake."

That line illustrates the literal warning don't wake a sleeping dog because it might bite. Over time, that literal advice became a metaphorical warning don't disturb a situation that's currently calm.

So by the 16th and 17th centuries, versions of that idea were included in a collection of proverbs. For example, John Heywood in 1546 said "It is euill wakyng of a slepyng dog." I don't know what you'll is. This is sort of like Middle English, I'm not sure, but I assume it means it's a bad idea.

Ah, evil. It's, they used to write with a U, right, instead of a V, so "It is evil waking of a sleeping dog." Okay, "It is evil waking of a sleeping dog." It is bad to wake a sleeping dog.

And obviously the modern form is "let sleeping dogs lie". And this was first recorded in collections like John Ray's English Proverbs in 1678. So there you go. It's been around for a long time, and even writers like Charles Dickens have used this phrase in their book David Copperfield.

It would be interesting to know, do you guys have an equivalent? Or perhaps you even have the same expression, but obviously in your language, you know the same idea of don't disturb a sleeping dog.

A similar one to this is "Don't poke the bear". You know, obviously the idea is like, I don't know, poking it with your hand or a stick or something. It's kind of like, don't cause unnecessary trouble. "Don't poke the bear", you know, don't annoy him.

Okay, let's go through some examples of how I would use this expression in everyday life.

Example number one: family gathering, right. So imagine a family getting together for a birthday lunch. Everyone's relaxed. People are chatting. Kids are running around. Food's on the table. Now, a year earlier, this same family had a huge argument, right? Voices were raised, feelings were hurt. And it took months before things felt normal again and settled down. But today, everyone's fine, right? Everyone's fine.

Then someone, trying to be helpful says, Hey, maybe we should talk about what happened last year just to clear the air. There's a huge pause. A few people exchange looks and someone quietly says, "Dude, let sleeping dogs lie!" Because right now there's peace. Okay, so avoid reopening old arguments. Avoid bringing up those past events. "Let sleeping dogs lie."

Example number two. Picture a team is in an office finishing up a project. The report's been submitted. Approved, and the client's happy. Months earlier, though, there was a mistake. A small one, but it was fixed quickly and forgotten.

Now, during a meeting, someone notices the old error in a document archive and says, "Should we bring this up, just in case?" The manager thinks for a moment and then says, "It's probably best to just let sleeping dogs lie.", right.

Because the issue isn't causing a problem anymore. Pointing it out now would only create stress, embarrassment, and unnecessary work with no real benefit. "Let sleeping dogs lie."

Example number three. Imagine a group of friends who've known each other for years. At one point, two of them have very serious falling out, though. They stopped talking. People took sides and the whole group kind of felt awkward and nearly fell apart.

Eventually time passed. Apologies were made quietly and things slowly went back to normal. Now someone new joins the group and says, "So what was that fight I heard about? You know, what happened with that fight? One of you mentioned it a while back, and I'm just curious."

There's an uncomfortable silence, and then one friend shrugs and says, "Dude, just let sleeping dogs lie. Let's just not talk about it." Don't dig up old drama. Avoid it. You know, 'Danger! Danger, Will Robinson', want- run away, run for the hills, avoid this problem. It's just going to bring up trauma, issues, drama. We don't need it. "Let sleeping dogs lie."

So hopefully now you understand that this idiom is all about peacekeeping. It's about making sure that someone doesn't bring up old problems, old drama and cause issues again, okay. "To let sleeping dogs lie".

[Would you like a car-donay, Kylie? Kim, it's not car-donay. The correct pronunciation is 'chardonnay'. Mum! It's French! The H is silent! Back me up here, Kylie!]

All right, as usual, let's go through a little speaking exercise. So this is your chance to work on your Australian English pronunciation.

If you have your own accent that you're working on, you know that is not Australian English. That's fine, too. Just use the words and phrases that I say as a prompt, to pronounce it the way that you would say it in the accent that you're working on.

Otherwise, if you're working on Australian English, obviously try and mimic the way that I say the vowels, the consonants and the linking speech.

The phrase today is going to be, "I think it's better to let sleeping dogs lie" and will conjugate through all the different pronouns, okay.

So find somewhere away from everyone where you'll feel confident saying these out loud. To work on your pronunciation, I'll say each sentence, you'll get a gap so that you can say it out loud. And then I'll say the next one. If you need to repeat it, just rewind.

All right. Let's practice with these different subjects, okay. The different pronouns.

I think it's better to let sleeping dogs lie.

You think it's better to let sleeping dogs lie?

He thinks it's better to let sleeping dogs lie.

She thinks it's better to let sleeping dogs lie.

We think it's better to let sleeping dogs lie.

They think it's better to let sleeping dogs lie.

It thinks it's better to let sleeping dogs lie.

Great work guys. Now, I did kind of try and say these phrases as linked together, right. I wasn't trying to create any gaps. You could probably do that. You know, you could say, "I think it's better to let sleeping dogs lie". You could kind of insert gaps there.

But a lot of English pronunciation, spoken English is joined together. That's what makes it so difficult for many learners, right? It's getting that flow, that melody, the rhythm, the connected speech, all of that down pat. Being able to nail that, okay.

So the thing I want you to focus on today, when you go back and listen to this exercise and do it again, in particular, is the linking of the word "think" or "thinks", depending on how it's conjugated, with the following word "it's".

Okay so you're going to notice.

I thing◡kits.

you thing◡kits.

he thinks◡sits.

she thinks◡sits.

we thing◡kits.

they thing◡kits.

it think◡sits, okay.

You're going to hear thing◡kits or think◡sits. So get used to linking those things together.

Quite often the rule is if a syllable, or a word, a single syllable word in a phrase, within a phrase, starts with a vowel sound, it is either going to link to the previous word. If that word ends with a vowel, with a yuh, wuh or ruh sound, or it's going to take the last consonant sound of that previous word.

And that is why you hear with the word "think", you'll hear it steal that K thing◡kits or with the word "thinks" it steals the S. "Think"- well, actually it takes the K and the S, right. It's like 'thing' and then 'ksits' think◡sits thing◡kits.

So there you go. Hopefully that helps. Go back listen again and try and do it yourself!

Okay, now it's time to do the Australian fact of the day. And today I want to talk about Australia's most famous canine, the dingo, Australia's only wild dog.

So Australia's original dogs aren't just pets, they're dingoes, wild canines that have roamed the continent for thousands of years. Dingoes are believed to have arrived in Australia around 3000 to 5000 years ago, brought by seafaring people from Southeast Asia. They're intelligent, adaptable hunters and play a crucial role in the ecosystem, keeping populations of kangaroos, rabbits and feral cats in check.

Dingoes often rest during the heat of the day, curled up in the shade or tucked into sandy burrows, saving their energy for hunting at night. And just like the idiom says, it's best to let sleeping dingoes lie. Waking or disturbing a wild dingo isn't just unwise, it's dangerous, especially in national parks where they roam freely like on carry. In Aboriginal cultures, the dingo holds deep spiritual significance and is often seen as both a companion and a guardian of country.

So if you ever get a chance, I hope you get to go on a holiday in Australia, and I hope you get to go to the outback and see these guys living in the wild and hear them they call, they bark to one another. It's definitely a beautiful thing when you get to experience them in nature.

So anyway, guys, that's it for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Don't forget to grab the free PDF download for today's episode. You'll be able to review the vocab, the pronunciation and examples and join the Premium Podcast membership as well at AussieEnglish.com.au/podcast.

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