Transcript of AE 995 - Expression: More Than You Bargained For

G'day, mob. How's it going? Pete here, from Aussie English and this is the latest episode of the Aussie English podcast. It's an expression episode, and I'm going to be teaching you the expression "to get more than you bargained for, to get more than you bargained for".

So, before we get into that, guys, don't forget, if you would like to support the podcast as well as improve your English at the same time, make sure that you sign up for the premium podcast membership where you will get access to all of the 980 or more podcast episode transcripts.

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Besides that, you might notice that I'm a little bit out of breath. I have been running around like a headless chook. That's a good expression for you, "to run around like a headless chook", chicken, is, I guess the idea that you're running around like crazy. You're doing a lot of different things, but it's kind of like doing it like crazy.

I have just been out in the living room running around with my son. So, he has got a lot of energy today, and I'm trying to wear him out before later when he goes to bed in about three hours, so fingers crossed. Might be a little earlier if I did my job well. But yeah, that's an expression for you, "to run around like a headless chook, to run around like a headless chook". Anyway, guys, let's get into today's news story.

All right, so a 60-year-old Austrian man has gotten more than he bargained for this week while sitting on the loo. After sitting on the toilet and commencing one of nature's most private acts, the man suddenly felt a pinch on his genitals. When he stood up to inspect the surprising incident, he discovered something as bizarre as it was horrifying. An albino python was staring back up at him from inside the toilet bowl.

It turns out the python had escaped from a neighbour's house and taken up residence in the Austrian man's dunny. The bitten- Can I help you? Are you going to come in and say hello? Come here. Come on. Come here, mate. You want to play with the cars. This is the problem, guys, when your son suddenly works out how to open doors. You just- You just interrupted the news story, mate.

Are you going to say hello? G'day. He doesn't know where he's waving. You're waving here, at that. You see yourself? See Yourself? Say hello. Say hello. Are you going to say... Hello? What do you want to do? All right. Okay, we're going to put pause on that, and I'll be right back. Apologies, guys. But that's what happens when you got small children. You're going to make them a part of whatever it is you're doing.

Anyway, let's continue with this story. Okay, so it turns out that the python had escaped from a neighbour's house and took up residence in the Austrian man's dunny, in his toilet. The bitten man was taken to the hospital and treated for minor injuries. I think that's where I would go to if that had happened to me.

When doctors told the man he was lucky to have escaped with his private parts intact, the man replied that the snake had clearly bitten off more than it could chew. Sorry. Oh, man. I'm sorry, guys, my jokes are horrible. Anyway, so that was an interesting story. I thought I had to include it, even though it was about an Austrian and not an Australian. Anyway, slap the bird and let's get into today's joke.

So, today's joke is, what do you call a snake that works for the government? What do you call a snake that works for the government? A civil serpent. A civil serpent. All right. So, the pun here is obviously on the word "serpent" versus "servant". Servant. If you are a civil servant, you are someone who serves the population of a country, a civil servant, you work for the government.

So, a snake that works for the government is a civil serpent. Oh, man. Jesus. I'm waiting for one of those huge, what are they like, hooks to just come out and take me off the stage. All right. So, today's expression is "to get more than you bargained for, to get more than you bargained for". Before we go through what this expression is, where it came from, and some examples of the expression.

Let me break down the words in the expression "more than you bargained for". So, "more", "more" is a greater or additional amount or degree of something. Maybe after you finish dinner, you want "more" dinner, you want a second serve, you want a second helping. Or maybe you get dessert, and you would like some extra dessert. You would like some "more" dessert.

"Than". "Than" is used to introduce a second element in a comparison. So, this is more "than" this. This is bigger "than" this. It's a comparison word. Word, I don't know, you're the English teacher Pete. "You". "You" is the second person pronoun. You guys will know "you".

And lastly, "bargain". "More than you bargained for, more than you bargained for". So, it's being used as a verb here. It is to negotiate the terms and conditions of a transaction. So, if you go to a market, you might "bargain" with someone who's selling something, who wants to sell it for, say, $100. And you say, ah, I might give you $50. What do you say? And they'll say, ah, nah, screw that, mate. I'm not giving it to you for 50 bucks.

This thing cost me like $80, you know, I need to get a profit, so you gonna have to give me 90 bucks. You end up "bargaining" and getting it for $80. And if we want to turn it into a noun, "you just got yourself a bargain". You "bargained" for a "bargain".

So, the definition of the phrase "more than you bargained for", if you get more than you bargained for, it is that you get an unexpected outcome, especially one that is unfavourable, that is not good. You get "more than you bargained for". It's almost like more than you wanted, more than you could handle, more than you could deal with, more than you thought you would get. "You got more than you bargained for".

So, where did this come from? I tried looking into this, and it seems like it dates back to at least the 1800s where it first appeared in Frederick Marriott's, Olla Podrida in 1840, quote, more wind than we bargained for.

So, you can imagine the literal idea is that you received more than you wanted when you were bargaining for something. And figuratively, obviously, it's when you get more of something that you would like, you know, the amount you get is undesirable. So, as usual, let's go through three examples of how I would use this expression in everyday English.

Example one, imagine you're organising a dinner with your grandparents. They're going to come over. They're going to visit you. And you're the one who's got a cook up some grub. Right. You're going to do a lamb roast and it's going to be incredible. You're going to have some potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, pumpkin, along with a lamb hock. Right, the leg of lamb. So, you go out and buy all the veggies, you get the gravy, you get the lamb.

And then when you get home and try and organise the food and put it in the oven, suddenly the doorbell rings and it turns out instead of just your nana and your grandfather showing up, you've got your uncles, your aunties, your nephew, your nieces, your cousins, every man and his dog in your family has shown up and you've got like 40 people. You were just expecting your grandparents. So, you got "more than you bargained for".

You weren't planning to feed so many people. It is an unexpected and undesirable result. It is "more than you bargained for". Example number two, so imagine you go on what you think is going to be a really relaxing and fun holiday. So, maybe you're camping in the sticks, right, in the outback, out in the bush in Australia.

You take your family, your dog, you pack the tent into your four-wheel drive, you bring your sleeping bags, you bring food, you bring everything that is, you know, going to make the holiday a great, great time. When you get to the campsite, and you set up shop. You pitch your tent. You start a fire, you start cooking up some grub, cooking up some food.

Then you kick back and relax in one of those nice camping chairs, you know, where it's got a little stubby holder on the side that you can put your beer in. And just as you do that, it starts pissing down raining. You all have to hurry inside the tent and the tent floods because of all the rain, this torrential downpour. And so, you end up having to get your entire family and the dog and sleep in the car instead.

Okay, so you got "more than you bargained for". The trip was "more than you bargained for". It was raining. It was unfavourable. It was undesirable. You got "more than you bargained for". It was more than you wanted. Example number three, Kel and our kids are a great example. After we had Noah, we thought all kids were going to be like him, right. He was easy to put to sleep. He loved playing. He was pretty well behaved.

He liked to eat all of his food. And then when we had Joanna, our second child, who's now five months old, she proved to be a completely different story. So, she hardly ever slept. She woke up all the time. She needed a dummy. She cried uncontrollably, so hard that my wife had hearing loss for a while. It was just- It was a nightmare. So, yeah, both her and I, my wife and I definitely got "more than we bargained for" with Joanna.

We were expecting her to be a female version of Noah and it all to be smooth sailing, for everything to be very easy like it was with Noah when he was a little baby. But it has been anything but that. It has been "more than we bargained for". So, there you go, guys. The expression "to get more than you bargained for or to be more than you bargained for".

It is for something to be an unexpected outcome or for you to receive or get an unexpected outcome, especially when it's unfavourable. It's not something that you want. It's too much. So, as usual, let's go through a little pronunciation exercise where you guys can work on your English pronunciation. So, let's go.

"More. More than. More than you. More than you bargained. More than you bargained for. More than you bargained for. More than you bargained for. More than you bargained for. I'll get more than I bargained for. You'll get more than you bargained for. He'll get more than he bargained for. She'll get more than she bargained for. We'll get more than we bargained for. They'll get more than they bargained for. It'll get more than it bargained for."

All right, so a few interesting things were happening there, re-pronunciation and intonation. Have a listen to when I say, "more than you bargained for". Can you hear the words that are being emphasised here, where the emphasis is going up? Right. So, "more than you bargained for, more than you bargained for, it was more than you bargained for". So, we're emphasising the words "more" and "bargained".

"Than" and "you" kind of get reduced. "More than you bargained for". And "for", as well, would be reduced if there were more words coming after it. Because we sort of end on "for", we wouldn't reduce it to just "f-", "more than you bargained f-". It sounds weird. You would have to have words after it.

Besides that, one other thing I want you to check out when you go back and do this exercise again is the dark L where I have used- The dark L for the contraction of "will" onto the pronouns. So, instead of hearing, I'll get, you'll get, he'll get with a clear L sound, the light L. I actually made an effort to use the dark L here, where it's a /l/- It's kind of a reverse W sound where the lips come in as opposed to going out.

So, instead of /l/ you'll hear /ɫ/, so instead of I'll it was I'll, I'll get. Okay, so we were talking about the dark L. So, yeah. The dark L is something that English speakers will use, especially Australian English speakers when after the L there is either no sound, so no vowel or no consonant, or there is a consonant sound. So, it is "I'll get" because there's a "g-", G sound after the contracted "will", the L sound there.

We can use the dark L, "I'll get" and it's just a slight movement of the lips inwards, "I'll get, you'll get, he'll get". And you kind of need to do it quickly. You can't really do it slowly. "I'll get, he'll get, they'll get".

All right. To finish up, I had some sea snake facts for you guys, we had a joke about snakes, we had a news story about snakes. So, I was thinking, how do I tie in snakes with Australia? I'm not going to just do; Australia has the 10 most deadliest snakes in the world. Did you know? I thought I would do something more interesting and talk about sea snakes.

Because I find these endlessly fascinating, and we have a heap of sea snakes species in Australia. In fact, they are probably the snakes that we know the least about. So, anyway, let me stop rabbiting on and get into the facts. Until recently, very little was known about sea snakes. But following a boom of research, more is being learnt every single day.

It turns out sea snakes are the most diverse marine reptiles, far outnumbering sea turtles and crocodiles in the number of species. Australia is home to around 70 species of sea snakes, only half of which have a name. They range in length from as short as only half a metre to up to three metres long. And these are snakes that live in the ocean, unlike snakes that live on the land. So, terrestrial vs. Marine or aquatic.

They live in shallow water close to the shore as they still need to come to the surface in order to breathe. And they are usually highly venomous due to their predation on fish, which when they bite, they need to kill as soon as possible. For obvious reasons, because the fish could just swim off. Many of these snakes are specialised predators that hunt things like eels, fish, or even live off eggs that they scrape from coral reefs.

They can be found all over Australia, though most of the species are located in the northern tropical regions where the water is much warmer. Some sea snakes are even fully aquatic, meaning they bear their live young in the water and never come onto land, a feat that even turtles and crocodiles haven't yet achieved. While most Aussies will never come into contact with a sea snake, on very rare occasions they do, and the results can be tragic.

In 2019, a British man working on a prawn trawler was bitten by a sea snake and passed away. He's believed to be the second person ever to have been killed by a sea snake bite in Australia. The first being all the way back in the year 1935.

So, if you ever go snorkelling or diving in the northern waters of Australia and you spot something out of the corner of your eye, that looks like a snake. Be careful. It probably is, so give it a wide berth. But also, don't be afraid to marvel at how cool these creatures are, too. So, with that, guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I will see you next time. Peace. Kelly?! Kelly?! Five minutes. Give me five minutes.