Learn Australian English in this Expression episode of the Aussie English Podcast where I teach you how to use LOSE YOUR TOUCH like a native English speaker.

AE 635.1 Expression: - Lose Your Touch transcript powered by Sonix—the best audio to text transcription service

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You're not Mike Munro. Who are you?

Well, my name was originally Kenniff, K E N N I F F. And I have two great uncles, one of whom was hanged in Boggo Road Gaol for killing a policeman and a station manager. Burning their bodies and breaking them up and leaving in a police saddlebags as bushrangers.

I'm Mike Munro. I'm Mike Munro. I'm Michael Munro.

Mike Monroe would have been Mike Kenniff, if not for one of the most violent and shocking crimes in Australian history. And two of his relatives, Patrick and Jimmy Kenniff, are to blame. They were infamous cattle and horse thieves who graduated to murder. And in doing so, humiliated the rest of the Kenniff family.

My grandfather was so ashamed of the history, he changed his name. It became Munro overnight. He had five children, one of whom was my father, and they all grew up illegally Munro. It was a family shameful secret for 80 years, and I didn't find that out until, you know, I was 30 or so.

Why the secrecy?

It was a grisly, ugly crime. So, I suppose back then, when you were so close to it, you really don't want to be associated with it. You change your name and and you forget it ever happened.

G'day, guys and welcome to Aussie English. My objective here is to teach you guys the English spoken Down Under. So, whether you want to speak 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.

G'day, you mob. Welcome to this episode of Aussie English. The number one podcast for anyone and everyone wanting to learn advanced English through the lens of Australian English. So, it's obviously a podcast for anyone interested in English, but clearly it has a strong focus on Australian English. The weird, strange, awesome dialect of English from Down Under in Australia.

Welcome to this episode, guys. Before we get into it, don't forget that if you would like the transcripts for every single one of these episodes, the bonus episodes, all of the other stuff that I shorten and put on the podcast, but if you want full access to it, you can get that by signing up to the Premium Podcast at a www.aussieenglish.com.au/podcast. And if you want to get access to hundreds of my advanced English courses that I make four episodes just like this one with bonus videos, bonus exercises, and you'll also get access to the three times weekly 30 minute speaking calls with teacher Renata, as well as the Premium Podcast, that is included in this membership too, make sure that you sign up for the Aussie English Academy and you can do that www.aussieenglish.com.au/academy. The links will be in the transcript or just go to the website.

Anyway, guys. The intro scene there at the start, that was a little clip from 60 Minutes YouTube channel. I like 60 Minutes, at times they have some interesting stories, though, sometimes they're a little bit sensationalist. But go and check out 60 Minutes Australia on YouTube. There's some great interviews and great stories on there. It's kind of like a news and current affairs channel, but this story was about an Australian journalist and TV presenter named Mike Munro.

So, he's been around for years. I remember growing up and watching him on TV, delivering certain stories on TV shows like 60 Minutes and A Current Affair, another TV show. And in this clip, he discovered a dark family secret that he had two great uncles, Patrick and Jimmy Kenneth, who committed one of the darkest crimes in Australian history when they were bushrangers and they killed, chopped up and burnt the bodies of some policemen.

So, he discovered that his family had actually changed their name in order to sort of hide the truth from the rest of the world and their descendants. But obviously, he found out.

Anyway, today in the Aussie Fact episode, I want to talk about bushrangers in Australia. That's why I used that clip at the start there. It's hard, I tell you what, it's hard. I was searching online, trying to find just sort of a broad interesting news story on bushrangers as a whole, but they tend to be about specific bushrangers, specifically, too, like Ned Kelly. Hopefully you guys know who Ned Kelly is. I kind of want to dive in and do an episode specifically on him in the future, but here's Australia's most famous bushranger.

Anyway, keep an eye out for the second episode where you'll be able to learn a heap more about bushrangers. Anyway, guys, apart from that, let's get into this episode.

So, I got a joke for you today. The expression was 'to lose your touch', so I thought I would look for a joke about losing things. So, here we go.

Where did the cat go when it lost its tail?

To the retail store.

Did you get it? To the retail store, right? A retail store is where you can buy things like clothes, you know? It's like Myers and Target and Kmart, a retail store. But obviously the joke here is like it's a verb or an adjective, a 'retail' store, right? A store that retails something, to put the tail back on something, right? That's the joke there. Where did the cat go when it lost its tail? To the retail store. These jokes are horrible, but I hope you get them. I like the puns.

Alright. So today's expression is 'to lose your touch'. 'To lose your touch'. I wonder if you've heard this expression used before in English. I wonder if anyone's ever said to you, 'I think you're losing your touch'. So, before we get into the definition of 'to lose your touch', what it means and go through some examples of how to use this expression in day to day English, let me first break down the words in this expression and define them for you.

So, if you 'lose' something, you could be deprived of that thing or you cease to have or retain that thing. In this sense, at least, you can obviously lose something where you can't find it anymore. But in this sense, if you lose something, you're deprived of it or you cease to have that thing anymore. So, you'll hear collocations like someone lost their virginity, right? It's not like they can't find it, but it's they don't have it anymore. They haven't retained it, right? So, if you lose your virginity, it means that you have had sex. You no longer have it, you cease to have your virginity.

You could also lose your way, right? You've lost your way. You don't know where you are, you don't know where you're going, you cease to have your bearings, right? You don't know where you are. You're you know, in the middle of nowhere, you're lost. You've lost your way.

And 'your touch', right? The word 'your' is obviously a possessive word. It's your thing, it's your touch.

'Touch' here is a distinctive manner or method of dealing with something. So, it's kind of your ability or the way in which you deal with something, that you do something. So, for example, a skill or an expertise. So, she has a certain touch when it comes to gardening. That's like she has a certain skill or a certain expertise when it comes to gardening.

So, to define the expression 'to lose your touch', if you lose your touch, you no longer have the ability to do or handle something skilfully. So, you can no longer do that thing with expertise or you've become worse at doing that thing, ok? So, maybe that woman who's gardening, she's got a certain touch with gardening. She's awesome gardening, but if she loses her touch, she's no longer good at gardening, right? So, well, that's just one example. Let's go through another three properly, ok?

So, example number one: my mum is a great cook. She loves baking things like cakes and bickies, you know, biscuits, lamingtons, Anzac bikkies, desserts. All kinds of sweet food like that. So, she's been doing this her entire life. She learnt from her mother, my nana, my grandma. And in fact, I think she's had this old cookbook with her that's been in the family for probably more than 50 years. Could be my mum's entire life, right? And that's probably more than 60 years. If one day, though, her skills as a cook start to fail, if her baking starts to take a bit of a nosedive, you know, it no longer is what it used to be. The cakes, the bikies, the desserts no longer taste as good as they used to, she's starting to lose her touch. So, I might say to her 'mum, what happened? Have you lost your touch or something? Your cakes and your bikkies used to be good. They used to be the bee's knees, they used to be the cat's meow. They were awesome! Now they're not so awesome. So, what happened? Did you lose your touch?'.

Example number two: so you got a mate and he loves Tinder, right? He loves dating women or men, you know, whatever, whatever floats your boat. So, he loves dating women in this example. He's always on Tinder, he's matching with new people. He's going out on dates all the time, but unfortunately, they never seem to click. So, he never clicks with the girls or the guys or whoever it is that he's going out on dates with. And so he has to let them down gently, he dumps them, he ends things, he breaks things off and then he moves onto the next person. So, he's a serial dater. Usually he's got a real touch with letting his dates down and ending things in a kind of positive way, you know, saying 'it's not you, it's me. And I think we'd be better as friends' or whatever. He's done it in a tasteful way. However, if he starts to lose his ability to do this well, if he no longer has a skill in ending relationships with people in a gentle and positive way, you could say that he is losing his touch. He's lost his touch so he can no longer dump people skilfully. He can no longer do it well like he could in the past, he's lost his touch.

Example number three: I've started watching this TV show called The Witcher on Netflix, right? It's not that amazing, but it's pretty good all the same, right? It's it's still pretty interesting. So, it seems ok, though. I watched it with Kel for the first episode and it was definitely not her cup of tea. She was not into it at all, she ditched it. She bailed and left me to watch the rest of it by myself, which is good, cause now I can binge watch it. As normally, She just likes watching one episode a day or every second day. I like doing it sort of all at once.

Anyway, so the main character in The Witcher is this monster hunter and he goes around and gets hired by people to hunt and kill monsters. He's a talented fighter, he's a warrior, maybe he's a knight. And he manages to find and kill his prey easily. If all of a sudden, though, he lost his abilities and he could no longer hunt down these monsters and kill them easily, or maybe he really struggles in the fight and ends up injured or, you know, loses his weapons or something. His mates might say to him, 'What's up, dude? Have you lost your touch?', right? 'How come you've lost your touch? You used to be awesome at hunting and killing and fighting monsters, but now you suck. Now you're horrible. What happened? Did you lose your touch?'.

So, there you go, guys. Hopefully by now you understand the expression 'to lose your touch'. It means to no longer be able to do or handle something skilfully, right?

So, to lose your skill or expertise at doing a specific task. So, as usual, guys, let's go through a little listen and repeat exercise where I'll say a series of words and phrases that you can repeat after me in order to practice your pronunciation, ok? Let's go.

To.

To lose.

To lose your.

To lose your touch.

To lose here touch.

To lose your touch.

And before we get into the next exercise where I'll go through the sentences 'it looks like I've lost my touch', 'it looks like you've lost your touch' etcetera, etcetera, which words in that phrase 'to lose your touch' have been reduced? And I'm using a schwa sound instead of the normal vowel sound for those words, right?

Now, I want to quiz you right now. So, if I say this phrase, 'to lose your touch', 'to lose your touch', which words have been reduced? 'To', and 'your', right? So, instead of 'to lose your touch', you'll hear 'to lose your touch'. And that kind of adds to the rhythm of things, right? 'To lose your touch'. 'To lose your touch'.

Practice those things, pay attention to rhythm, to pronunciation and to reductions, specially using the schwa as it is an important part of pronunciation and speaking especially with connected speech in English. And ironically, using these kinds of reductions will actually make it easier for people to understand you than if you were to pronounce every single word clearly and sound a bit more like a robot. Anyway, don't forget, if you want to work on your Australian pronunciation, get my Australian Pronunciation Course with hundreds of exercises and videos and descriptions and everything in there about how to pronounce things with an Australian accent. It's a great way to reduce your foreign accent in Australian English seat and go and find that at www.aussieenglish.com.au/courses, ok? Check it out. Anyway, let's keep going with this exercise.

It looks like I've lost my touch.

It looks like you've lost your touch.

It looks like he's lost his touch.

It looks like she's lost touch.

It looks like we've lost out touch.

It looks like they've lost their touch.

It looks like it's lost its touch.

Good work there, guys. Good work. It's not easy, but just keep practicing these exercises. Remember, I know that you can speak English, I know that you have an advanced level in English, but pronunciation, in whatever language you're learning is an ongoing thing that you have to work on, right? You don't go to the gym once and think that you're fit, from then on you have to keep working at it, ok? Anyway, guys, that's it for today's episode.

Now, in the Aussie Fact episode, I'm going to be talking about bushrangers and their sort of history in Australia. I hope you guys know about bushrangers., I hope you find them interesting, but I would love to know from you after listening to this episode that's coming up, do you think bushrangers are the good guys or the bad guys? Because these guys often ended up on the wrong side of the law and they often ended up taking the lives of innocent people, but sometimes they didn't have a choice. Sometimes they were victims of their circumstances and had no other option but to turn to the dark side, right? To go dark.

Anyway, I would love to know from you, guys, what you think of Bushrangers, so let me know and until next week, I hope you have a good one. See ya.

G'day, mate. Thanks for listening to the Aussie English podcast. If you'd like to boost your English whilst also supporting the podcast and allowing me to continue to bring you awesome content, please consider joining the Aussie English Academy at www.aussieenglish.com.au. You'll get unlimited access to the Premium Podcast as well as all of my advanced English courses and you'll also be able to join three weekly speaking calls with a real English teacher. Thanks so much, mate. And I'll see you soon.