The New Zealand fur seal, familiar to many of us for perching up on our rocky shores, is lucky to still be here at all. A hundred and fifty years ago sealers at almost reduced this furry fellow to total extinction. Fortunately, there were still a few left overs, and slowly but surely, the New Zealand first seal is making a comeback.
Why were their pelts so highly sought after and the sealing days?
Oh, they were soft and pliable, and apart that, you know, later on they boiled them up, if you like, and used the oils and that as well.
G'day, guys, and welcome to Aussie English. My objective here is to teach you guys the English spoken to Down Under. So, whether you want to speak like a fair dinkum Aussie or you just want to understand what the flippin' 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 the English.
What's going on, guys? How's everything going? How is your weekend going? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English, guys. This is the number one podcast for anyone and everyone wanting to learn English, but not only that, anyone wanting to level up their English in general as this is an advanced English podcast.
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All right, you mob. So, that's seen at the very start. I wonder if you picked the accent from that scene, right. So, you'll probably get it once I tell you what it was about but that was an interesting accent and it was an Australian accent. So, go back and have a listen if you want to guess what accent that was.
So, the video was about the New Zealand fur seal and it was from a TV show called Meet the Locals. You can watch the entire clip via the link in the transcript and jump over to YouTube. But the accent she was speaking with was a New Zealander accent. So, there's some differences there in vowel pronunciation. See if you can go back and have a listen to it. Anyway.
So, because the expression today has the word 'seal' in it, the expression is 'seal of approval', I thought I would try and find a joke about seals, right, the animal, seals from the ocean, right?
So, the joke is: What do seals do when they need medical attention?
What seals do when they need medical attention? So, they are injured or something and they need treatment from a doctor or a nurse. They need medical attention. What do they do?
'Sea kelp'. So, trash. Oh my god.
'Sea kelp'. Get it. 'Sea kelp'.
So, this is a pretty deep joke, right. I mean, if you see the words, you'll understand and 'sea kelp' is the algae in the ocean, right. It's kelp in the sea. But the point here is with the words, 'Seek help', as in to try and find assistance, to try and find help. If you look for help, you're seeking help. I'm trying to seek help. And I go to the beach to (see) sea kelp.
So, what do seals do when they need medical attention? Sea kelp. It's so horrible.
Alright. So, today's expression, guys, is 'seal of approval', which is sometimes said a 'stamp of approval' as well. 'Seal of approval', 'stamp of approval'.
This was suggested by Emma in the Aussie English Classroom. Guys, if you want to suggest your expressions, we then vote on them after you've suggested them, make sure you get in the classroom, jump in the Facebook group and we all work in there and choose these expressions each week.
So, as usual, let's go through and define the words in the expression 'seal of approval'.
'A seal'. 'A seal' is a piece of wax or lead or other material with an individual design stamped, you know, as if you had a stamp which is that thing that presses a certain image into something else, right. So, maybe you stamp your name on a document, if you have your name on a stamp, right. Hopefully, that makes sense. ...stamped into it, attached to a document as a guarantee of authenticity. So, the document is sealed with a stamp that shows it is authentic. Could be some wax, some lead, or some other material, right.
'Approval'. 'Approval' is the action of approving something, right, accepting something, agreeing with something, allowing something to go ahead. Okay. So, you usually ask for someone's approval before you do something. You might ask your boss for approval to make some changes at work or you might ask your parents for your... for their approval to go out on the weekend, right. 'Approval'.
So, let's define the expression 'seal of approval' or 'stamp of approval' as you may hear it sometimes.
If a person or organization gives their 'seal of approval' or their 'stamp of approval', they officially say that they like the thing and they are accepting it or that they think it is acceptable. For instance, ministers have put their seal of approval on a proposal. But we'll get into more examples shortly.
So, where did this originate from?
The phrase was used as an advertising gimmick by Good Housekeeping Magazine, which gave its seal of approval to products that it endorsed. The products, in turn, bore a small emblem, that is that they had a small emblem on them, that attested to this endorsement, that showed that they had been approved, that they had been endorsed.
So, let's go through some examples guys of how I would use these expressions: 'seal of approval' or 'stamp of approval'. Alright.
So, imagine number one. You are a young man who has been courting a girl for a while. And if you court a girl, it is that you are trying to, I guess, you know, pursue her romantically. You want to marry her. You want to have a relationship with her. It's all of the stuff you do before that happens officially. Right. You court that girl. You take her out. You get to know her. You show her you're worthy of being in a relationship with.
So, maybe you're both from traditional families, maybe you're both the same religion, you know, you could be Christian, Jewish, Islamic. You don't believe in sex before marriage, so you're pretty conservative. And you, as the men, know that before you ask for the girl's hand in marriage, you need to seek approval--you need to 'seek help'--seek approval to marry her from her father.
So, one night you go to a house, you have dinner with the family, and then after you've had dinner, you ask to speak to her father privately. So, you sit him down in the lounge, maybe you two are alone, you know, the others are out in the kitchen or something, and you ask his permission to marry his daughter. If he gives you his permission, he's giving you his seal of approval. He's giving you permission to do so. He's allowing you to marry. So, he might say, "Yes. I like you mate you can marry my daughter. I'd give you my seal of approval.".
Example number two. Imagine you are the king of a country, maybe England or France or Spain, you know, somewhere in Europe hundreds of years ago before the likes of iPhones, e-mails, and instant messaging.
You have to make many deals and agreements with other kings and queens in Europe, other leaders in Europe, about things like trade or maybe, you know, borders, or war, allegiances. Whenever documents are written up for you, though, that you have to sign, you have to melt some candle wax, you have to pour that onto the document, you have to stamp it with your royal seal as a way of signing the document officially, right.
So, quite literally, you are giving it your stamp of approval when you stamp it, and the thing that you're stamping it with is a seal. You're giving it your royal seal of approval. Okay, so both literally and figuratively, you're giving the document your seal of approval, you're giving that document your stamp of approval.
So, all right number three. Imagine you work for a huge car company and you're the head of a big engineering project where you guys have to design the next luxury sports model of Ferrari or Lamborghini or Porsche.
So, you start from scratch designing this car and you spend months and months with your engineering team designing the engine, the chassis, the body, the wheels, every aspect of the car. You've gone over it with a fine tooth comb and made sure that the design is perfect.
Once you think it's ready for testing, you might have to send your teams design to head office, right, to the CEO at headquarters or some other high up exec, executive, for them to give you the go ahead. So, they have to look at it. They have to assess it. They have to give it their approval. They have to give it their stamp of approval. They have to give it their seal of approval.
And that's because you know building the car the very first prototype of this new design is going to cost millions of dollars and they need to make sure it's up to scratch. They need to make sure that it is what they want. Fortunately, they like the plans and they give it the seal of approval.
So, hopefully now, guys, who understand the expression 'seal of approval' or 'stamp of approval'. Often said as to give someone your seal of approval or give someone your stamp of approval, and that is when someone agrees to something or says that something is acceptable, right. They approve something. They give that thing their seal of approval.
So, as usual, guys, let's go through a little listen and repeat exercise. This is a great chance to practice your speaking, your pronunciation, your intonation, everything like that in English.
As they always say, guys, if you want to work on your Aussie accent, try to copy me as best she can. If you're working on a different accent, that is fine as well. Don't copy my pronunciation exactly, but work on the intonation, work on the rhythm. Okay. Let's go.
A.
A seal.
A seal of.
A seal of approval.
Good job. There's quite a lot of connected speech in there, right, with the 'seal_of_approval'. Okay, so pay attention to that where we're linking the consonants at the ends of words to the vowels at the front of the next word. 'A seal_of_approval'.
Alright. So, let's go through and conjugate through a sentence and we'll do this in the past tense: I gave her my seal of approval, you gave her your seal of approval. Okay? Let's go.
I gave her my seal of approval.
You gave her your seal of approval.
He gave her seal of approval.
She gave her seal of approval.
We gave her our seal of approval.
They gave her their seal of approval.
It gave her its seal of approval.
Good job, guys, good job. Keep working on those exercises, because they will definitely help and you'll learn to do that intuitively.
But don't forget that if you want to fast track your improvement when it comes to speaking, when it comes to pronunciation, rhythm, everything like that, make sure that you sign up to the Aussie English Classroom, guys.
Remember, it is just one dollar for your first month. If you haven't joined up already, there are no excuses. Everyone can afford a dollar no matter where you are in the world, and you can get in there for at least 30 days and use all the material with no restraints, with no limits, and if it's not for you you can cancel before the end of that 30 days, guys.
I do this because I want you to get the most out of this as possible. I want to help you guys improve your English as much as possible. Alright. Spiel aside. Let's get into the Aussie English fact.
So, I thought I would talk about seals for obvious reasons, right, 'seal of approval'. I was thinking what can I talk about. Australia has seals, right, that animal at the beach or in the ocean. So, I'll talk about seals in Australia. Alright.
So, seals in Australia. What are seals and which species are found in Australia and Aussie territory?
So, seals are aquatic mammals that have flippers instead of hands or feet and they spend the majority of their time in the ocean, although, they come back onto the land to reproduce.
And so, they're similar to things like dolphins and turtles with regards to flippers, which is kind of a more dexterous appendage than say what fish have, right. Their fore limbs of their hind limbs are sort of shaped like a paddle.
So, seals alongside sea lions and walruses belong to a group called the pinnipeds, which means 'having feet as fins' in Latin.
Worldwide there are 33 species of pinnipeds, 10 of which are found in Australian waters. I didn't know that. We have a third of them here in Australia, or nearly a third.
However, only three of these species are found in southern Australian waters, while the remaining seven are found in Australia's Antarctic territory.
The three species that you are able to see here in Australia with a bit of luck are the Australian fur seal, the New Zealand fur seal, and the Australian sea lion.
So, these fur seals and sea lions are all close relatives in the family Otariidae, 'the eared seals', and they are different from other seals in the family Phocidae, 'earless seals'.
So, what's the difference between fur seals and sea lions in Australia and other seals, because they're actually a little bit different from one another?
So, first seals and sea lions are close relatives and they're found in the family Otariidae, 'the eared seals', that is the seals that have ears. Whilst other seals are found in the family Phocidae that 'earless seals', the seals that don't have ears, and they differ in some pretty unique and cool ways.
Firstly, as just mentioned, sea lions and fur seals 'eared seals', they have small ears on their heads. While 'earless seals', as the name suggests, have no obvious ears. They just have holes in their head.
Secondly, fur seals and sea lions have much more dextrous skin-covered elongated fore flippers, right, the flippers at the front of their body compared to the more stubby front flippers of other seals.
Thirdly, they have a more developed hind set of flippers where they can swivel these flippers underneath their bodies, which allows them to lift their bodies up completely off the ground and move in a faster hopping or galloping-like motion across the land. Whereas, earless seals are unable to lift themselves up using their hind flippers, and instead, are forced to move across the land in a much less dignified, caterpillar-like crawl.
Fourthly, sea lions and fur seals are much more social and spend much more time out of the water in gregarious groups often called 'herds' or 'rafts' of up to maybe 1,500 individuals.
And lastly, as a result of being so social, they make a great deal more noise. They bark, they communicate with each other, and they do this a great deal more than their more docile and solitary earless seal cousins who only resort to using soft grunts when they're forced to, you know, awkwardly socialize in situations.
Seals and humans in Australia.
So, for tens of thousands of years, Aboriginals have hunted seals for food and skins across southern Australia in places like Tasmania and the mainland above Bass Strait.
In the late 1700s hundreds, a new competitor showed up, the sealers belonging to the British colony. These guys made their way around southern Australia, and unlike their more passive Aboriginal rivals who only killed what they needed, the sealers were driven by profit and killed without restraint until their ships were full of seal meat, skins, and oil to be traded and sold back into the colonies or exported back to Europe.
To both the detriment of seals and aboriginals alike, sealers is all but completely wiped out seal populations by 1820. So, it took them a few decades. By which time, only a few remnant populations remained and many breeding colonies had been completely destroyed such as the sea lion colonies in Bass Strait.
Fortunately, none of these species went extinct and all of since bounce back since that time, although, many face both direct and indirect threats from humans including a reduction in food supply, human disturbance, oil spills and chemical contaminants, as well disease.
So, where can you see seals in Australia?
So, you'll find seals all along the southern coast of Australia from Sydney going south into Victoria and Tasmania, which is where you'll find the Australian and New Zealand fur seals, west into South Australia where you'll start to see sea lions as well, and then further west into Western Australia and up the coast as far north as Shark Bay.
So, some great places to see seals and sea lions include:.
Montague Island in New South Wales.
Philip Island in Victoria, where I've been, and there's a great place there that you can check them out at 'Seal Rock'.
Seal Bay in South Australia.
And Shoalwater Marine Park near Perth in Western Australia.
So, thanks for joining me, guys. I hope you learn a bunch today. A whole heap of English, a whole heap of facts, and I will see you in the next episode. All the best.
G'day mate. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Aussie English podcast.
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Have a ripper of a day and I'll see you in class.