In this Aussie English episode of Like A Native I teach you guys how to use the phrases “A fair call” or just “Fair call!”.

Like A Native – A fair call / Fair call!

Hey guys. Welcome to this episode of Aussie English. I hope you’ve all been well. I hope you’ve been having a good week or a good month or a good year. I hope everything’s going well on your end.

Sorry I haven’t been doing a lot of episodes more recently. I’ve been a little busy with work and a little bit busy with trying to write up this PhD, and so, I am a little bit swamped at the moment. And, “To be swamped” is sort of an idea or a way of saying that you have a lot to do or that you’re sort of… almost like you’ve got too much to do, and the idea is obviously that you’re getting submerged in a swamp, I guess, and a swamp is this kind of… like a source of water where you can walk out into it and it’s really muddy and you can kind of sink into the swamp. So, if you “Get swamped by something” whether it’s work, you can imagine the work pilling up on your desk and you’re sort of getting submerged in the work, that idea of getting submerged in the mud in the swamp sort of translates across into this expression “To be swamped”. Anyway, there’s a little free expression for you, “To be swamped by something”.

What have I been up to this week? I’ve been studying, I’ve been working, I’m getting a lot more back into training jiu-jitsu, and I got pulled out of bed this morning at around 9 O’clock with my housemate who’s the manager of the gym that I train at, and he wanted to go in and train today, it’s Saturday. And so, we headed in this morning, and yeah, it was really good. [I’m a] bit tired now, [I’m a] bit beaten up, [I’ve] got a few bruises on my face, but [I’m] glad I exercised. So, [I’m] feeling better. [I] came home and had something to eat and then [I] thought that I should probably write an episode and make something for you guys to listen to this week. So, here it is.

Today, I wanted to discuss the expression “A fair call”, and I got the idea for doing this expression or this Like A Native little sort of interjection or saying, this thing that natives say quite a bit, “A fair call” or “Fair call”, when I was interviewing my folks trying to do some of these Chinwag episodes that you may or may not have seen on YouTube. So, if you haven’t seen those definitely jump on YouTube and have a look at the Aussie English Chinwags episodes that I’ve done with my parents where they talk about how they would use certain expressions and phrases in English as a native. And so, I sort of sit them down and ask them on the spot without them being able to research it or think about it ahead of time. So, they have to sit there, I give them an expression and I ask them how would they use it, what does it mean to them, and can they give me examples of situations where it would be used? So, I think this is definitely the kind of thing that will help you guys improve your English whether it’s Australian English or just English in general. So, definitely check those episodes out. A lot of them are only 30 seconds to maybe a minute or a minute and a half long. And when I was doing some of these expressions, because I wrote down maybe 10 of the most recent Like A Native and Expression episode phrases and expressions that I’d done, because I wanted to go over the same expressions so that you guys get to reinforce that work you’ve already done, they also added in a few other ones, and “A fair call” was one of them, and I think “Nailed it!” was another one. So, if you remember “Nailed it!” means to get something right or that you’re correct, you know, if someone says something that is definitely correct you could say “You nailed it”. “Nailed it!”.

But, “A fair call”, they threw that in there. And “A fair call” is… it’s said when something someone says is correct, that you agree with it. So, if someone says something that is definitely correct, you may not have thought of it previously or it may surprise you, but when you realize, “Oh my gosh, that’s correct!” you can say, “Oh! That’s a fair call!”, and you can also just say “Fair call!” as a response. So, that’s said as a response to someone when they say something you definitely agree with. If someone says, “Oh it’s really hot today we should go to the beach” that sounds like a good decision, it sounds like a good choice, a good call. So, you could say “Fair call!” or you could say that “That is a fair call!”, as in they’ve said something that is a good decision, fair enough, a good call. So, yeah, it’s another way of sort of saying “That’s a good decision, that’s a good choice, fair enough, good call.” And “A call”, to define “Call” it’s just a choice, a decision of some kind. So, it’s that idea of agreeing with someone that has said something and you definitely think that’s the right choice, it’s the right decision, you agree with them, it’s true.

So, as usual, we can go through some examples of situations where you may say this phrase or you may hear this phrase.

And so, the first example could be that you were planning to take the dog for a walk. So, you’ve got a nice new puppy at home. It’s been a really nice day up until now and you want to take him outside, take him down to the beach, throw a stick for him, play fetch for a bit, but as soon as you walk outside you notice that it’s actually getting pretty bad weather wise. So, it’s clouded over, it looks like it’s going to rain, and when you go back inside, because you’ve decided “I’m not going to walk the dog. I might do it later”, you go back inside, you hang the leash up on the wall, and your husband or your wife or someone else, whoever else is in the house and thought that you were going to walk the dog could say to you, “Aren’t you going to go take the dog for a walk?” and you could tell them that “Well, I walked outside and it looks like it’s about to rain, and to be honest I’d prefer to walk the dog when the weather clears up where I’m not going to get saturated, where I’m not going to get wet from the rain.” And that person could say to you, after you’ve told them your decision, “That’s a fair call.” So, they could say, “Ah… you make a good point. That’s a fair call. It’s a fair decision. It’s a good choice. That’s the right course of action. So, definitely wait for the weather to get better and then go for a walk.” And they could also just say, “Ah! Fair call! Fair call!” as in “Ah good decision.”

So, the second example, you’re going to the movies with a friend but you haven’t decided which film that you guys are going to see yet. So, you thought “I’ll go to the movies with my mate, and once we get there we’ll see what’s available, what’s out, what time it’s on and then we’ll decide what we’re going to go and see.” So, as soon as you walk into the theatres, into the cinema, the first thing you guys see is a poster for Star Wars and the other person that you’re with sees a poster for Ice Age, and you guys are like arguing over which one of these films you’d rather see. And then all of a sudden one of you notices that the new Leonardo Di Caprio film is out. So, say The Revenant that recently came out, I think, this year. And seeing as both of you guys are say massive fans of Leonardo Di Caprio, you’d much prefer to see that than Star Wars or Ice Age. One of you could suggest, “Well, let’s go see The Revenant. It’s Di Caprio’s new film. We both love Di Caprio. Let’s go see The Revenant!” and the other person could say, “Oh! Definitely. Fair call!” or “That’s a fair call! It’s got Leo in it. Let’s see that instead. We’ll both like that. Fair call!”.

So, example number three. Say, you and your partner are going out for dinner. You go out for dinner each week and tonight is that night where you guys go out for dinner, but until tonight you hadn’t decided what kind of food you were going to have, you hadn’t decided which restaurant you were going to go to. And so, as you’re getting ready you guys could be chatting and you could be saying, “Oh, I really want to go to this nice Japanese place in the Melbourne CBD.” And the other person could say, “What about Italian. We could go to Lygon st!” which is a street just outside of the CBD that is renowned for its Italian restaurants and cuisine. And the other one could say, “Well, we had Italian last week. Don’t you remember? We should go and check out this Japanese place. It’s on the top floor of a building. It’s said to have a beautiful view of the city. I think we’d both really enjoy that.” And the other person could say, when they remember, “Oh well yeah, ok we had Italian last week”, they could say, “Oh! Fair call! Let’s do that then!” So, “That’s a fair call. We did have Italian last week and this Japanese place sounds amazing. Fair call! Let’s go to this Japanese place, check out the view, have some different food. You made a fair call. It’s a good decision. Let’s do it!”.

And, I thought just as a little side example, when I was writing these sort of out in dot-point forms to think about the examples that I was going to include in this episode I remembered a little story from my childhood where my sister went to AFL, the Australian Football League, a football match with my dad, and I don’t remember if I was at this one or if I just heard this story later, but so… when my sister was young she used to go for a team called The Bulldogs. So, The Bulldogs is a team, you may’ve heard of them. They finally won the premiership this year after I think a big big big drought. So, they hadn’t won in a very long time, we call that a drought, like no water, no rain. They had had a sixty year drought, I think. I think it was in the mid to late 50s or even the early 60s when they last one a premiership. And so, The Bulldogs won this year. Anyway, my sister initially barracked for, she supported The Bulldog football team, and she liked them, and so my dad took her to a Bulldogs’ football match and I think The Bulldogs were taking on, they were competing against the team The Kangaroos, so North Melbourne, The North Melbourne Kangaroos. And, my dad gave my sister some money to go and buy a flag so that she could wave the flag in support of The Bulldogs. And so, my sister went away and my dad was sitting there watching the game. My sister went away, [she] bought the flag, [she] came back and she had the wrong flag. She had The Kangaroo flag. So, a blue and white flag with a kangaroo on it instead of a blue white and red flag with a bulldog on it. And my dad’s initial thought was, “Oh no, she’s accidentally bought the wrong flag.” You know she didn’t realise that that was The Kangaroo one and not The Bulldog’s flag. And when my dad said to her, you know, “You’ve got the Kangaroo flag there” my sister said, “Yeah I know! I preferred this one. It looked better”. And so, since then my sister’s gone for The North Melbourne Kangaroos instead of The Bulldogs. And this is a situation where I can imagine my sister saying “Well, this flag looked better so now I go for this team” and my dad laughing, you know, and humorously saying in response, “Fair call!” like “Ok, well, that’s fair enough. Good decision. That’s, you know, as rational a decision that you could make to pick a team to support as any one else. So, fair call! That’s a fair call! Good choice.”

So, that’s it for today guys. I hope you enjoy this episode. Listen a few times. If you have any questions about certain phrases, certain expressions that I’ve used in here, because I have used a few, definitely send me a message or a comment on Facebook and if you’d like me to do an episode on any of these expressions that I’ve dropped, that I’ve used in this episode, or any other expressions that you guys are having difficulty with or that you’ve heard used but aren’t necessarily quite sure about how to use them yourself, and you want a bit of clarification, please feel free to send me a message or even mention it in a comment on Facebook as the podcast is here for you guys. It’s here to help you guys improve your English. So, first and foremost, I want to create material that you guys want help with and that you enjoy. So, anyway, this one’s gone long enough. I hope you’re enjoying it guys. Give me feedback, and I’ll see you soon! All the best guys.