Transcript of AE 1014 - Expression: Have Nothing to Show For It

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. What's going on? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn, you guessed it, Australian English. So, I hope you guys are going well. I am at home enjoying the serenity that is the absence of small children.

So, I am thoroughly enjoying the fact that my daughter is sleeping soundly at the moment, my wife is also sleeping soundly, very soundly at the moment, and my son is at day-care. So, there is- There's no sound, there's no screams, there's no crying, there's no yelling. It's phenomenal. It's phenomenal. Yeah. You guys have no idea how difficult it is to find this kind of time to be able to record in quiet, in silence, now. But it is great.

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And if you're interested in courses, I've got a pronunciation course, I've got a phrasal verb course, and I've got a spoken English course, and a real English discussions course that you can check out on the website, as well. Just go to AussieEnglish.com.au. So, guys, let's get into today's news story. The dads of Great Britain have put their wit and humour to the test this week on Father's Day as the UK's best dad joke was selected.

Thousands of fathers across the country submitted their proudest, so bad it's awesome joke for the Aldi Mamia best Dad joke competition. Stand-up comedian and father of two, Mark Watson was selected to be a judge in order to choose the best of the best or perhaps the worst of the worst, depending on your sense of humour. Runner up jokes included, I was wondering why the frisbee kept looking bigger and bigger, and then it hit me.

Then I realised why, then it hit me. What did the Pirate say on his 80th birthday? I m'eighty. Get it? I'm 80. And the joke that selected as the winner, absolutely takes the cake, and I'm going to tell you it in today's joke section. Okay, so that was the news story, guys. Now it's time to slap the Kookaburra, and let's get into today's joke, which was the winner of this Aldi Mamia Best Dad joke competition.

All right, so here's the joke, and it's a bit of a long one, so bear with me. I once hired a limo, but when it arrived, the guy driving it just walked off. I said, Excuse me, aren't you going to drive me? The guy told me that the price didn't include a driver, so I spent $400 on a limo and have nothing to chauffeur it.

What's the matter? A little tense about the flight. Something like that. There's really nothing to worry about, Mary. Statistically, they say you're more likely to get killed on the way to the airport. You know, like in a head on crash or flying off a cliff or getting trapped under a gas truck, that's the worst. I have this cousin...

You get it? The joke here- Okay. The joke here is that if you have nothing to show for something, this is that you have nothing to show for the work or effort that you've put into something. You have one no advantage by whatever it is that you've done.

So, imagine that you, I don't know, you're going to work, you work the entire day and no one pays you for that day. You have nothing to show for that day's work. You've got no money as a result of the work that you did, nothing to show for it. But the joke here, the pun is on that expression. "Nothing to show for it".

And the verb to "chauffeur" something. And this is the French word "chauffeur". C-H-A-U-F-F-E-U-R, which sounds like "show for or show for". And if you chauffeur something, you drive something, right. So, the chauffeur is the person who generally drives, say, a limo, right. So, if you've got nothing to chauffeur a limo, you've got nothing to chauffeur it. You have no driver. You've got nothing to show for it. So, there's the joke.

I thought it was funny. Anyway, let's get into today's expression, which is "to have nothing to show for it or to have nothing to show for whatever it is that you want to put in there". Something. To have something. If you have something, you possess that thing. "Nothing", not anything. No single thing. The absence of something is "nothing". "To show". This is, allow or cause something to be visible, for you to be able to see it.

Let me "show" you a texter. Let me "show" you a pen. And "to show for something" is to display as a result of something, right. So, if we get into the definition of this expression, if you have "something to show for something", remember we went over this earlier. It is to have something to display, something to show other people for the work, for the effort that you have put into something, that you have exerted, that you have done.

So, it is to win an advantage for something or well, to not win an advantage from something, really. I guess here, if you "have nothing to show for something", you've tried, you've done something you've put a lot of effort in, but you've got nothing as a result of that effort. So, as usual, let's go through three examples of how I would use the expression, "to have nothing to show for it. To have nothing to show for something".

Alright, example number one. So, imagine you and your wife have been working all your lives. You've been working hard. You've been earning a crust, say, working as a limo driver or say, working as a podcaster. You've put in overtime, you've saved all your money, you've invested it carefully for your retirement.

However, suddenly out of nowhere, like in 2008, there is this huge financial crash and you and your wife lose all of your savings in the stock markets, right. So, your investments effectively go to zero, you lose all your money. So, everything goes up in smoke. You no longer have your investment funds, your retirement funds.

All your life was spent saving money and working hard, but now "you have nothing to show for it. You have nothing to show for all the hard work and effort that you put in". Example number two. Imagine you're an athlete who's been training to go to the Tokyo Olympics that recently finished. And you want to compete, you want to win, maybe you're a gymnast and you've been training since you were only, you know, three or four years old.

So, you spent most of your life centred on, focussed on your gymnastics career, getting up early going and training. And you have trained so hard you've been able to qualify for the Olympics, you go, you compete, but unfortunately you end up having a horrible fall and breaking your leg. So, as a result, you don't win any medals you don't place, "you have nothing to show for a lifetime's worth of effort trying to get to the Olympics.

You've got nothing to show for it". Example number three, let's talk about a limo business owner. So, you've- Imagine you're from Lebanon and you've migrated to Australia in the 70s or 80s and you started your own business driving limos, right.

You bought your first limo, you started driving that around, you made a bit of money, you saved that money, you slowly expanded your collection of limos, your fleet of limousines. And you've ended up hiring a bunch of other people to drive them.

So, you've got a whole team of chauffeurs, now. If one day your factory or well, wouldn't be a factory, your warehouse full of limos and everything burns down, and you lose the lot. You might think, oh, man, I worked so hard. I put so much blood, sweat and tears into this business. I built it up over 30 years, and "now I have nothing to show for it. Now I have nothing to show for all that work.

I have bugger all to show for it". So, there you go, guys. That is the expression "to have nothing to show for something or to have nothing to show for it". It is to have nothing that you can show, you can display, that other people can see as a result of the work or effort that you've put in to achieving something, right, into something.

So, as usual, let's go through a little listen and repeat exercise here, where you can practise your pronunciation. So, listen and repeat after me. Focus on intonation, pronunciation, rhythm, everything like that. You can use this as a shadowing exercise. Let's go.

"To. To have. To have nothing. To have nothing to. To have nothing to show. To have nothing to show for. To have nothing to show for it. To have nothing to show for it. To have nothing to show for it. To have nothing to show for it. To have nothing to show for it.

I've got nothing to show for it. You've got nothing to show for it. He's got nothing to show for it. She's got nothing to show for it. We've got nothing to show for it. They've got nothing to show for it. It's got nothing to show for it."

Okay, so there's some interesting stuff going on here, pronunciation-wise, let's talk a little bit about intonation first and I guess emphasis and the reduced forms of some of these words. So, when I say the phrase "to have nothing to show for it", which words do you hear in that phrase that are reduced?

And you're going to know this if you've listened to a lot of these expression episodes because it tends to be the same kinds of words. "To have nothing to show for it. Tæ have nothing tæ show fæ it. To have nothing to show for it". Well, we can even do it to "it". We could say "for æt, for æt. To have nothing to show for æt". Yeah, in fact, I think I would say that over "to have nothing to show for it or for it".

I'd say, "to have nothing to show for æt. For æt, for æt". So, words like "to and for", and even "it" can all be reduced in these sentences, in phrases like this where they are given the schwa vowel sound, the most common vowel sound in English and they get reduced. So, you'll hear tæ instead of to, fæ instead of for, and æt instead of it.

The other interesting thing here is, what do you hear between the words "for and it", when I say these together? "For it or for æt", there's an "R" sound. So, the "R" in Australian English, as you know, is non-rhotic, Australian English is non-rhotic, but we say the "R" at the ends of words or within words if there's a vowel sound after the "R".

So, you're going to hear, "for it", it's going to become "for æt" because there's the vowel sound /æ/ at the start of the word "it". "For æt, for æt". "To have nothing to show for æt. To have nothing to show for æt. For æt". All right, guys, to finish up, let's go through an Aussie fact, and so obviously we were talking about limos a little bit in today's episode, and so I thought, what can I tie this in with, with Australian cultural history?

What was Australia's first car? When did we get the first car here in Australia? So, I sort of dug into the internet. I did some digging; I did some research to find when cars first got to Australia. So, the very first Australian car was a steamer that was built in the year 1896, over a hundred years ago, and it was named the Thompson Motor Phaeton.

It was built in the city of Melbourne by Herbert Thomson and Edward Holmes and nicknamed the Phaeton. The newly developed mode of transport was able to travel at a whopping 14 kilometres an hour and managed to drive an astonishing 790 kilometres. However, as you'd imagine at that speed, it took quite a while to do so. In fact, it took 56 hours to complete the journey. Almost quicker to walk, I think, guys.

The feat ended up stimulating more motor vehicle development all across the continent as demand rapidly grew for automobiles across Australia, A man named Harley Tarrant developed the country's first petrol driven car in the year 1901. Tarrant's prototype was widely considered to be Australia's very first car due to its combustion engine driven by petrol, which had used a motor that had been imported from Benz in Germany.

So, why do we call cars, "cars"? The English word "car" is believed to originate from the Latin carris or carrum meaning wheeled vehicle. Or it came through old north French in middle English in the word "carr", meaning two-wheeled cart. Both of these words, in turn, derived from Gaulish "karros" meaning chariot. The word originally referred to any wheeled horse drawn vehicles, such as a cart, a carriage or a wagon.

Either way, car definitely sounds way better than the original alternative that was going around in the late 1800s, horseless carriage. So, there you go, guys. That is it for today's episode. I hope you've enjoyed it, and I will see you next time. Ciao.