In this Aussie English episode of Like A Native I teach you how using the phrases “Good one!” and “Nice one!” like a native is easy!

Like A Native: Nice one!/Good one!

G’day guys. Welcome to this episode of Aussie English. I’m Pete, I’m your host, I’m here today to do the second video of Aussie English where I’m trying to video these episodes now, and as we’ve talked about in previous episodes, kill two birds with a single stone. So, to kill two birds with one stone, one rock, whatever it is that you’re throwing is to get two things down with one bit of effort. So, I’ve thrown a single rock and I’ve killed two birds. I’ve taken the birds home and I’ve eaten them. So, I threw once and got two results. So, that’s what I’m trying to do here guys. I’m trying to produce videos for you guys. I’m recording the audio and I’m talking about these different aspects of English, and I’m just hoping to produce material that is useful for you. So, if you’re visual the video’s obviously going to be good. I’m going to try and put subtitles on each one of them, and if it’s more that you like the audio aspect, you can obviously listen to the podcast. So, when you’re out and about, when you’re walking and you obviously can’t look at the video on your phone or on your computer. So, (to kill) two birds with one stone, video, audio, let’s do this!

Alright, so, this episode is a Like A Native episode, and the different expressions or sort of mini phrases that I wanted to talk about today, that aren’t really interesting enough to do an expression episode on, are GOOD ONE! GOOD ONE! And NICE ONE! NICE ONE!

So, GOOD ONE is one of those phrases that’s actually said quite a bit by English native speakers, and it’s said as a form of encouragement. GOOD ONE! Or NICE ONE! NICE ONE!

So, let’s just define GOOD and NICE. You guys’ll know what this word is by now, or these words are* by now, but let’s just define them anyway. GOOD or NICE in this sense is to be desired or approved of. So, if something’s good, something’s nice, you desire it or you approve of it. GOOD ONE! NICE ONE!

Examples of how you would use this. So, imagine that you show you dad a painting. You’ve gone home and you’ve painted, you’ve spent the day with your, you know, canvas on an isle and you’ve been painting away and your dad comes in and has a look. If he really likes it, or if you say “Dad, check out this one that I painted today! This painting that I painted today.” He could say “NICE ONE!” as in “Nice painting”, NICE ONE! Or he could say, “GOOD ONE! GOOD ONE” that painting is good. It’s a GOOD ONE. GOOD ONE! And so you can see in that sense the word ONE is just replacing the noun. So, the noun here is the painting or a painting and instead of saying “Oh good painting!” or “Nice painting!” you can just say “GOOD ONE! NICE ONE!”.

Another example could be say you breed dogs, you breed Labrador dogs *woof woof* and one of the bitches, and in this sense it’s ok to use the word “Bitch” because “A bitch” is a female dog. One of the bitches has had a litter of puppies, and there’s one puppy that you really like. There’s a really big one, say, he’s not the runt of the litter, which is the smallest one. This one’s the biggest one. And say, he’s adorable, he’s really cute, he’s fun, he’s just lovely. And so, you want to point him out and say “Look mum! Look! This is my favourite puppy out of the litter.” Your mum could say, “Yeah! That’s a NICE ONE! Yeah, that’s a GOOD ONE!”. So, that one, that puppy is really good, it’s really nice, and they agree with what you have to say. They approve of what you have to say.

So, it can be said both seriously, in e.g. someone’s shown you a painting or the little kid’s grabbed their puppy and said “Mum! Look at this puppy!” and you could say seriously “GOOD ONE! NICE ONE!” or you could say it sarcastically. So, if someone does something stupid in front of you, say they’re joking around in the kitchen and they pick up a plate of food and they’re like “La la la” and drop the plate on the ground and it smashes. You could literally walk up to them and say “GOOD ONE…”, as in “Good job. That was… what you were doing was really good. Well done. Well done.” And you could also say “NICE ONE, dude. NICE ONE. We were going to eat that plate of food. We were going to take it out side. We were having a barbecue. You picked it up, you decided to be an idiot and joke around. You dropped the food. NICE ONE. GOOD ONE. Good job. Well done. Here’s a round of applause.” So, that’s how you could use it both seriously and sarcastically.

To go through some examples. I mean I just went through two but we’ll go through a few more in depth examples.

Someone tells you a joke. So, whatever the joke may be, if you like the joke you could say “Haha! GOOD ONE!” or “NICE ONE! NICE ONE!”.

Someone takes an amazing photo or paints and incredible painting as we said before, or some kind of art and they’re showing it, if you really really like it you could say “Oh! That’s such a GOOD ONE!” you know “Oh! That’s such a NICE ONE”. And so, you could be saying to someone next to you if they didn’t actually paint it themselves, you could say “This is a NICE ONE. This is a GOOD ONE.” But if the painter themselves is there and you want to tell them that you really approve of what they’ve done you could say, “Man! NICE ONE! Man! GOOD ONE! This is brilliant! GOOD ONE! I approve. Brilliant. GOOD ONE! NICE ONE!”.

Another example could be that someone tries to show off and fails. So, this is going back to that use of it sarcastically. Someone tries to, you know, an old man at a family gathering is trying to be silly and he gets on his grandson’s skateboard, and he tries to do something on the skateboard to sort of show off and say, you know, “I can do this better than you kid!”. And, instead of succeeding in what he’s trying to do he falls straight off the skateboard onto his arse. So, he falls off the skateboard, lands on his butt, and he’s not hurt but he looks like an idiot. You could say that, or everyone around him, could say “Oh… grandpa NICE ONE.” You know, “Oh… grandpa GOOD ONE. You idiot. Good try. GOOD ONE. NICE ONE.”.

And the last example could be that someone has accidentally bumped into a vase that’s on a table, you know, again this is that idea of they’re not showing off in this example but they do something clumsy, they’re careless, they’re reckless, they knock a cup, you know, or a vase or something sitting on a table off the table and it smashes. And say, you really liked that vase. It was a vase that was given to you by your parents or your grandmother or something. You could turn around and be like “NICE ONE. That was really important to me and you just smashed it. NICE ONE. GOOD ONE.”.

So, hopefully that clears up how to use these phrases guys, NICE ONE and GOOD ONE. Just to recap, just to go over it again, to use GOOD ONE or NICE ONE you can use it when talking about something that you desire or that you approve of that you agree with. Someone shows you something that they’ve done like a painting “GOOD ONE, NICE ONE”. Someone shows you something like the puppy, they could hold it up and be like “What do you think of this?” and you go “NICE ONE! GOOD ONE! I love it. NICE ONE. GOOD ONE” or you can use this sarcastically when someone does something stupid whether it’s embarrassing themselves by trying to show off like grandpa “NICE ONE grandpa… GOOD ONE grandpa…” or it’s their careless, a little bit reckless, maybe clumsy, and they accidentally break something or they accidentally do something that’s inconvenient, you know, you could be “NICE ONE, dude. GOOD ONE. GOOD ONE.”.

So, that’s the phrase, or the phrases, NICE ONE and GOOD ONE. And as usual we’ll go through a listen and repeat exercise here at the end guys where I’m going to say each of these phrases five times and I want you to listen and then repeat it exactly as I say them. Don’t worry about the context. Don’t worry about thinking too much about what they mean. This exercise here is to help you improve your pronunciation. So, just repeat it exactly as I say it, after me.

Listen and repeat:

Good one x 5

Nice one x 5

So, that’s it for the episode today, guys. I hope it’s helped. Let me know what you think, and just chat to me guys. I’m here to help you. I’m here to serve you. If you have anything that you’re worried about in your English at all ask and I’ll be there to help you guys. Until next time. See you later.