Learn Australian English in this Expression episode of Aussie English where I teach you the expressions TO HAVE A BLAST and TO BE A BLAST.

Expression: To Have A Blast/To Be A Blast

G’day guys.

Welcome to this episode of Aussie English.

I hope you guys have all been well.

It’s been a little while since I have specifically recorded one of these as a podcast episode.

So, hopefully the audio’s going to be a little bit better.

Until recently I’d been focusing a little bit, probably too much, on making videos and seeing how that would go with uploading them to YouTube, and it’s a very very long process.

But, hopefully you guys have been enjoying the different videos I’ve been uploading.

I’ve been doing a whole heap of Walking With Pete ones as well as expression ones and just other language learning tip videos.

So, if you haven’t checked them out yet definitely go over to YouTube and have a look.

In those videos, too, I’ve tried to include vocabulary for all the videos, specifically the vocab that I highlight and go over in the PDFs.

So, if you have any feedback for what you think of those videos and how I can improve them, or if you think they’re really good just let me know, because I always love hearing from you guys to sort of get an idea of what you’re enjoying and where to put my energy.

So, I always want to know where I can best put my energy in the podcast and create the best resources possible for you guys, particularly, these free ones that I give away to you guys that you can use at your leisure.

Anyway, today we’re going to go over the expression TO HAVE A BLAST or TO BE A BLAST.

TO HAVE A BLAST, TO BE A BLAST.

This one comes from Thibault, and he was talking to me on Facebook in the Facebook Members Group for the Aussie English Supporter Pack.

He was asking about what this expression meant.

So, I thought, “Oh, (it’s the) perfect chance to make an episode and upload it this week covering this expression.”

So, TO HAVE A BLAST or TO BE A BLAST.

We’ll go over the definition of the words in this expression first.

Obviously, you guys know TO HAVE, you know to possess, or TO BE when you are something.

I mean TO BE is a pretty hard one for me to define.

It’s such a basic verb.

So, they don’t really need defining.

But, A BLAST, A BLAST, it’s obviously a noun, and if you want to get really technical A BLAST is a destructive wave of highly compressed air that spreads outwards from an explosion.

So, I mean, most of the time I’m going to use this interchangeably with words like “an explosion”, “a bang”, “a boom”, when something goes off that’s A BLAST to me, A BLAST.

So, imagine you’ve got some dynamite, you light it, put it somewhere and it explodes.

You could say, “The explosion that went off, it was A BLAST.” or say you’ve got some C4.

You’re a soldier.

You’ve put it on a door somewhere because you’ve got to get inside, and you blow it up, and it goes off with A BLAST.

Or an atomic bomb, you know, imagine the Second World War when the atomic bombs went off in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

You could say that that was AN enormous BLAST, A huge BLAST.

So, TO HAVE A BLAST just means to have a great time, to have a lot of fun, or to enjoy doing something a lot.

And TO BE A BLAST is when a specific thing was great, was a lot of fun, was incredibly enjoyable.

So, it’s a pretty simple expression guys.

I’m sure you guys get it.

So, TO HAVE A BLAST is usually used to talk about something that a person has experienced, say, “I HAD A BLAST at the party last night.”

Whereas, TO BE A BLAST is usually used to talk about that something being a good experience.

So, “The party last night WAS A BLAST.”

So, there you go.

Three examples here of how you would use this expression.

1.

So, going off that one we just mentioned, a party.

Imagine that you’re at a birthday party.

You have an amazing time.

All your favourite friends and family members are there.

You get, you know, really drunk.

You eat a lot of great food.

You hear great music.

The next day someone could be asking you, “Oh, man, how was that party last night? I heard you got to see all your friends. You had your favourite drinks there. It was awesome food. I heard the entertainment, the music was amazing. What’d you think?” and you could say, “Oh! The party WAS A BLAST! The party WAS AN absolute BLAST. It was great. I enjoyed it. It was amazing.”

Or, you could say, “I HAD A BLAST at the party. I HAD AN absolute BLAST at the party. The party WAS A BLAST. I HAD A BLAST at the party.”

2.

A second example could be that you went on holiday to The Gold Coast.

So, for example, a lot of Melbournians and people from Victoria and in the south of Australia often go north for holidays.

So, we’ll go up the coast and enjoy better weather.

It tends to be a lot colder in the south and a lot more muggy and rainy than it is, say, in the north.

So, we go to The Gold Coast.

There’s lots of beautiful beaches there.

So, imagine you’ve gone on a holiday.

You’ve come back after two weeks away on The Gold Coast surfing, seeing heaps of people, going partying, whatever.

You come back.

You see your family and they see you all tanned and happy and like you’ve had a great time.

They might say, “Oh! How was the holiday? Was it good?” and you could say, “It WAS A BLAST.”

Or, they could say, “Did you have a good time?

Did you have a good time on your holiday?” and you could say, “Oh! Absolutely. I HAD A BLAST. The holiday WAS A BLAST. I HAD AN absolute BLAST on the holiday to The Gold Coast.”

3.

A third example, just to finish up here, could be that you have travelled to Australia from Brazil.

So, g’day to everyone from Brazil listening to this podcast.

You’re a Brazilian.

You’ve come over to Australia, and you’ve tried surfing for the first time in Australia.

Although, that would probably be a little weird for Brazilians, because Brazilians are known for surfing and beautiful beaches.

Anyway, that aside, imagine they have come to Australia for the first time.

They have gone surfing for the first time down at Bells Beach.

Bells Beach is a beach along The Great Ocean Road, or I think, just before The Great Ocean Road in Victoria here.

And this is where we have like the Rip Curl Pro Surfing Competition each year.

You’ll see people like Mick Fanning, he’s a famous Australian surfer, and American surfers like Kelly Slater, often competing there.

So, you’ve gone surfing down at Bells Beach for the first time.

You had an amazing time.

You thought it was absolutely incredible.

You didn’t get killed by any sharks.

You didn’t get hit by any other boards, or injured in any kind of way.

You got out of the water after an hour of surfing, you know, and it was absolutely incredible.

You could say, “I HAD A BLAST surfing. Surfing for the first time in Australia WAS AN absolute BLAST. It WAS A BLAST to come here to Australia to Bells Beach to go surfing. The whole thing WAS A BLAST. I HAD A BLAST. It was amazing.”

So, that’s pretty much it guys.

I’m sure by now you get the sense of this expression TO HAVE A BLAST, to have a good time, to really enjoy yourself, or for something TO BE A BLAST, for that thing to be really enjoyable, for it to have been incredibly good fun.

So, to finish up here we’ll do a little listen and repeat exercise guys.

So, just listen and repeat after me and try and mimic my accent perfectly if you’re after an Australian accent.

Otherwise, just copy what I’m saying based on the words that I’m saying and use the accent that you’re after whether it’s a British accent or an American accent.

But if you want to copy me here’s your chance to do it.

So, listen and repeat after me.

Listen and repeat:

I had a blast.

You had a blast.

He had a blast.

She had a blast.

We had a blast.

They had a blast.

It was a blast.

And so now I’ll do that at natural speed.

I had a blast.

You had a blast.

He had a blast.

She had a blast.

We had a blast.

They had a blast.

It was a blast.

So, that’s it for today’s episode guys.

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So, I teach you words like “Gonna”, “Wanna”, “Havta”, “Dunno”, “Doncha” and give you a bit of an introduction to contractions like a native.

How they do it as a native.

And one last little mention here guys, I have released the Aussie English Supporter Pack.

This’s been out for about a month now.

We’ve got quite a few people who’ve signed up and they seem to all be enjoying it.

So, the Aussie English Supporter Pack is premium transcripts for each one of these episodes.

So, I highlight all of the vocab that I go through in these episodes.

I also give you a lot of bonus exercises.

So, you get like a vocabulary list to fill out.

So, all of the highlighted words and difficult phrases in the text are all listed in a table for you to fill out.

I also give you audio and written substitution exercises, and I often go over phrasal verbs and other idioms and collocations that use prepositions, so other words that are commonly grouped together with prepositions.

I also give listening comprehension questions for each episode as well as language learning tips and tricks.

So, this’s also got a Facebook Members Group where you guys can jump across if you sign up, and we all work together to chat and tackle problems you might be having in English, and I just spend a lot more time there trying to engage with you guys.

So, if you want access to that group and you want access to these premium transcripts definitely check that out, and have a think about signing up.

You don’t have to, but it’s definitely something you can do if you want to take your English to the next level.

Anyway, guys, that’s enough from me.

I hope you guys have been enjoying these episodes, and I’ll chat to you soon.

All the best.