1
00:00:01,680 --> 00:00:46,770
Some people play footy, I play
plants, ok? And the reason being that
all our medicine is disappearing. So,
this whole heap of medicines that
I've heard stories, people all
Aboriginal families heard the stories
and I'm just fortunate enough to have
a father that showed me this. This is
a... what they call a lemon-scented
gum and it grows very well around our
Woorabinda area. Anyway, what it is a
citronella, if I say that word right,
but what that means is it's an insect
repellent. So, back in the old days,
we'd grab a leaf, probably preferably
these greener shoots , and we'd pull
some off like that and we'd rub on
our arm. And guess what? That would
keep mosquitoes away.

2
00:00:52,950 --> 00:01:16,515
G'day guys and welcome to Aussie
English. My objective here is to
teach you guys the English spoken
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 Aussie English.

3
00:01:27,180 --> 00:02:03,137
What's going on guys? Welcome to this
episode of Aussie English, guys.
What's going on? How's your week
been? Where have you been up to? I'm
in a good mood, I'm in a good mood,
so I went and saw my accountant today
to try and do my tax because this
year it's gotten a lot more
complicated with Aussie English. So
Aussie English is doing well, you
know, thanks in large part to you,
guys, big thanks to you guys, but as
a result, I need to get an accountant
to do my tax and, you know, fill
these things out for me because it's
just a nightmare for me to try and do
myself.

4
00:02:03,210 --> 00:02:30,978
Anyway, so I finally did that and it
was good. I had a meeting with him
for a few hours, he actually is a
friend from high school, so I haven't
actually seen him in ten years and he
just had a baby this year as well,
actually, end of last year, so we're
much on the same page in life at the
moment, but yeah I feel good. I'm
pumped. I'm happy that it seems that
the tax is all sorted and it's going
to be smooth sailing this year. It is
going to be smooth sailing, anyway,
guys.

5
00:02:31,048 --> 00:02:50,860
Welcome to this episode! This is
Aussie English, the number one
podcast for anyone and everyone
wanting to learn Australian English,
culture, history all of that, but
mainly just advanced English, right?
You're learning English through the
lens of Australian culture and
history and yeah, through me, as an
Aussie.

6
00:02:52,230 --> 00:03:34,630
Today the intro scene there, guys,
was from the youtube channel Fitzroy
Basin Association. This was a
gentleman named Steve Kemp, who is an
Indigenous man living in Woorabinda,
and he was talking about the
different bush medicine that he has
learnt to use, bush medicine being
the flora and fauna of the local area
where Indigenous people live, you
know, in the outback or in the
forest, wherever it is, they use a
lot of that to treat ailments, to
treat illnesses, sicknesses. So, he's
had that passed down generation to
generation from his father to him and
probably for thousands of years, you
know, it's it's incredible stuff to
learn about indigenous culture.

7
00:03:34,680 --> 00:03:46,832
Anyway, I wanted to include that
today because the expression is
related to flora, to plants, to
flowers, so I thought it would tie in
with bush medicine and Indigenous
culture, which is what we'll be
talking about in the Aussie English
Fact today.

8
00:03:49,123 --> 00:04:16,563
Alright, so before we jump into that,
guys, if you want to get the premium
podcast, you want access to all of
the transcripts, all of the downloads
for the podcast and any other bonus
content related to the podcast, you
can sign up for that for the price of
a few coffees a month if you go to
www.AussieEnglish.com au and whilst
you're at www.AussieEnglish.com.au
you can also get your hands on, you
can also wrap your fingers around,
get a hold of the Aussie English
Academy, which is all of the bonus
content and courses related to these
expression episodes.

9
00:04:26,021 --> 00:05:11,570
So, this is where you can really work
on your cultural knowledge of
Australia, your understanding of
Australian history, slang,
expressions as well as our language
pronunciation and everything like
that. This is a good place for you to
go if you're interested in studying
hard and improving your English
rapidly, ok? It's sort of like an
online immersion where there are
online classes each week with teacher
Renata ,there's three of those, to
work on your fluency and your
speaking skills, and there's also an
endless amount of content for you to
work your way through and improve
your English. And besides that, you
can get your hands on my other
courses, the Phrasal Verb course that
I have there, the Australian
Pronunciation course on there and the
Spoken English course.

10
00:05:12,210 --> 00:05:30,456
Anyway, let's dive into the joke,
guys. Today's joke is a flowery joke.
It's a joke about flora, right? The
expression is about flowers, about
flora, about plants. I thought I'd
find a joke and this one's a killer.
It's beaut. Are you ready? Why do
flowers always drive so fast?

11
00:05:32,080 --> 00:05:36,082
Why do flowers always drive so fast?

12
00:05:38,070 --> 00:06:27,269
Not that I've ever seen a flower
behind the steering wheel of a car.
They put the 'petal' to the metal. Do
you get it? They put the 'petal' to
the metal, right? A petal is like the
leaf of a flower, but the expression
pedal to the metal, pedal to the
metal, if you put the pedal to the
metal it's that you push on the
accelerator in a car, push on it so
that it hits the ground in the car or
the bottom of the whatever that is,
the the part of the car where you're
sitting as the driver and it hits
metal, so you've put the pedal to the
metal, but we quite often use that T
flap and it sounds like a D, right?
So, that's the pun there. They put
the 'petal' to the metal, 'petal'
instead of pedal.

13
00:06:28,540 --> 00:06:36,192
I hope you get it. It's lame, it's
lame, but it's good. It's a pun and
it's also a useful expression, to put
the pedal to the metal, drive faster,
drive faster.

14
00:06:36,193 --> 00:06:59,468
So, today's expression is 'to gild
the lily', 'to gild the lily'. This
comes from Eliana, who is in the
Aussie English Facebook group, guys,
get in there. We put in a bunch of
material each week, we try and engage
you guys, get you commenting and
talking and posting videos to work on
your English. And we also ask you for
expressions suggestions for the next
week's expression episode. So,
Eliana, good choice. We put this one
to the vote and Eliana won, 'to gild
the lily'.

15
00:07:06,197 --> 00:07:21,093
So, let's go through the definitions
in the expression 'to gild the lily'.
Now, 'guild' is a verb, but it's not
often used, at least I don't often
hear this, right? It's kind of rare
language. I think if you were to look
up the frequency list of English
words, 'guild' would be somewhere
down the bottom.

16
00:07:25,423 --> 00:07:59,925
So, to guild something is to overlay
it with or as if with a thin covering
of gold. So, you might guild cutlery,
you might put a thin layer of gold on
it to make the cutlery gold, as
opposed to say having cutlery that
was completely made of gold. You
might guild a picture frame with
gold, you may gild a perfume bottle
with gold or even ornamentation on
furniture might be gilded. It may be
covered in gold, ok?So, to guild
something, to cover it in a thin
layer of gold.

17
00:08:01,200 --> 00:08:23,642
And a 'lily', a lily is a kind of
flower or it's a kind of plant,
rather, right? We might refer to the
plant and the flower with the same
name, a lily. It's a genus of her
base flowering plants that grows from
bulbs, all with large prominent
flowers. So, if you do a Google
search for 'lily', I'm sure you'll
recognize it, the photos will ring a
bell, you'll remember it, you've
probably seen it around the place,
right? It'll be in people's gardens,
a lily.

18
00:08:27,627 --> 00:08:42,131
But the definition of the expression
'to gild the lily'. So, you could
imagine gilding something is putting
gold on something, a thin layer of
gold. You've got a lily, the flower
and so you're putting a thin layer of
gold on a lily, a really beautiful
flower. So, what could this
expression mean?

19
00:08:44,625 --> 00:09:08,055
It means to try to improve something
that's already beautiful, that's
already excellent, right? So, you're
embellishing it. You're trying to
make it much better than it already
is, although, it's unnecessary
because it's so good. So, it's adding
superfluous attributes to something,
it's adding unnecessary ornamentation
to something that's already beautiful
in its own right. To gild the lily.

20
00:09:08,790 --> 00:09:26,773
Now, this was another one of those
probably, you know, endless amount of
expressions in English that comes
from Shakespeare. So, William
Shakespeare used this expression in
his play, John King, from the year
1595, and the funny thing is this
expression is actually a misquotation
of what William Shakespeare said in
this play, ok? And what was said is
the following:.

21
00:09:35,136 --> 00:09:55,484
"To gild refined gold, to paint the
lily, to throw a perfume on the
violet, to smooth the ice or add
another hue onto the rainbow or with
taper light to seek the beautaceous
eye of heaven to garnish is wasteful
and ridiculous excess."

22
00:09:57,330 --> 00:10:07,149
I don't know what that accent was.
It's probably not how Shakespeare
spoke, but whatever, we're getting
into character this week. So, there
you go. That's where it's from.

23
00:10:07,840 --> 00:10:13,683
So, let's go through some examples of
how I would use the expression 'to
gild the lily' in day to day life,
ok?

24
00:10:14,240 --> 00:11:05,151
So, example number one, and this is a
true story. Kel and I often go out
with friends, you know, we want to
catch up with mates, we want to hang
out and so maybe we've got some
interesting news and we want to spill
the beans to them about this news.
So, we go out Kel often gets dolled
up. She puts on makeup, she puts on
lippy, you know, all of that jazz,
she wears a nice dress, the works.
So, she's trying to make herself look
really beautiful, right? Meanwhile, I
tend to go easy on getting dressed up
and just wear, you know, jeans, a
shirt and some nice shoes. When I see
Kel all dolled up and putting me to
shame, right? Making me look bad
because I haven't gotten dolled up, I
haven't dressed up, I say to her
quite often dude you know no need for
makeup you're already drop dead
gorgeous as it is, right? There's no
need to gild the lily. There's no
need to try and improve what's
already beautiful. You can't improve
on perfection, no need to further
embellish or add unnecessary
ornamentation to what's already
stunning', right?

25
00:11:12,378 --> 00:11:23,305
So, maybe Kel might beg to differ
with me, though. She might say 'are
you joking?' You know, 'if I don't
put on makeup and lipstick, I'll be
the only girl out there without it,
so I need to gild the lily',  so
there you go.

26
00:11:23,892 --> 00:12:00,483
Example number two: may be I am
busting my guts trying to create an
amazing podcast episode for you,
guys, just like this one will
hopefully turn out. So I work my ass
off writing it, researching it,
rewriting it, refining it with the
hopes that in the near future, down
the track, the episode's going to be
top notch, it'll be perfect. It'll be
the bee's knees and you guys are
going to love it. So, maybe I'll
finish up and I show it to Kel to
have a look at and ask for her
opinion, I want her 2 cents on what
she thinks about the episode, I want
her opinion and whether she thinks
it's good enough to publish.

27
00:12:00,650 --> 00:12:18,295
If she tells me it's perfect, but I
say yeah, nah I'm going to keep
tinkering with it, I think I could do
better. She might say, you know, 'are
you nuts? Are you crazy, are you
bonkers? It's perfect! It's great the
way it is no need to try and gild the
lily. No need to try and improve it,
it's already great'!

28
00:12:18,434 --> 00:12:54,829
Example number three: so imagine
you're really into cars you're a
total revhead and your mate buys a
new Holden Maloo V8 ute, right? One
of these really expensive, top of the
line, utes. And he brings it over to
your house to show you. So, you go
outside, you get in the driver's
seat, you give it a rev. You want to
hear the engine and maybe he even
lets you take it for a spin, right?
Take it for a test drive, so that you
can see how she goes and you put the
pedal to the metal, right? Maybe you
go for a bit of a hoon in his car,
you drive fast, maybe a little bit
recklessly, without breaking the
laws.

29
00:12:54,880 --> 00:13:21,642
And you want to see what it's made
of. You come home afterwards, you
know, you pull in the driveway and
after you return maybe he tells you
that he's thinking of doing up the
engine and adding a supercharger or a
turbo charger as well as a new
exhaust system to make it even more
powerful on top of how powerful that
already is, right? So, he's thinking
to maybe I'll give it a paint job,
I'll put flames down the side, you
know, I'm going to make it look epic.

30
00:13:22,590 --> 00:13:39,397
If you think that's a bit too much,
if you think that's overkill and that
this Maloo, this ute, is already top
notch, it's already phenomenal. You
might ask him: 'mate, I can't wrap my
head around why you would want to
gild the lily. Why do you want to do
that? Your ute is already a beaut,
leave it as it is, right? No need to
gild the lily".

31
00:13:42,820 --> 00:13:53,453
So, there you go, guys! I hope you
now understand the expression 'to
gild the lily'. It means to try and
improve something that's already
beautiful or excellent, right? To
embellish or improve something
unnecessarily.

32
00:13:55,118 --> 00:14:09,328
So, now let's go through a little
listen and repeat exercise, guys, as
we always do, it's always good to
work on our pronunciation. This is
one of my... I don't know if you call
it a motto, it's not really a saying,
but it's definitely a practice that I
like to encourage my students to do.

33
00:14:11,413 --> 00:14:37,789
Pronunciation is something you have
to work on forever effectively,
right? You should always pay
attention to pronunciation. So, that
is why these pronunciation exercises
are in these episodes. So, listen and
repeat after me, guys. If you're
working on an Aussie accent, really
try and nail the way that I say it.
If you're not, that's cool too, just
use the words as a prompt to practice
the accent that you're trying to
nail, ok? Let's go to.

34
00:14:41,890 --> 00:14:42,578
To.

35
00:14:42,579 --> 00:14:42,989
To gild.

36
00:14:42,990 --> 00:14:43,242
To gild the.

37
00:14:43,243 --> 00:14:44,218
To gild the lily.

38
00:14:46,763 --> 00:14:52,700
To gild the lily.

39
00:14:56,700 --> 00:14:57,700
To gild the lily.

40
00:14:57,895 --> 00:14:58,895
To gild the lily.

41
00:15:03,525 --> 00:15:09,679
To gild the lily.

42
00:15:13,690 --> 00:16:00,824
Before we finish this exercise where
I'm going to go through phrases like
'I don't want to gild the lily', 'You
don't want to gild the lily', I want
to point out there that dark L, ok?
Did you notice that in the sentence
'to gild the lily'? Which L? There's
three of them in there. There's one
in the word 'guild'. Did you hear it
there? And there are two in the word
'lily', right? So, two of them in
this sentence are light Ls, said like
la la la la la, 'lily', and the other
one is a dark L, where it's actually
like a reverse W sound, like a "ew"
kind of sound, 'gild', right? 'Gild'.
This is where my lips are making the
L sound instead of my tongue, ok?

43
00:16:02,200 --> 00:16:18,519
So, if you want to know more about
that, get my Australian pronunciation
course, guys, we go into deep
analysis of the dark L and how to say
it, but have a listen again try and
practice that because it's something
that native speakers do all the time
when the L is not followed by a vowel
sound.

44
00:16:18,820 --> 00:16:31,510
So, there's a D after the L in
'guild', so we don't have to say it.
Alright, let's go through the
sentences that I want to do in this
exercise and I want you to pay
attention to the contractions in
here, ok? The spoken contractions.

45
00:16:32,650 --> 00:16:34,120
I don't want to gild the lily.

46
00:16:34,218 --> 00:16:35,786
You don't want to gild the lily.

47
00:16:41,728 --> 00:16:43,394
She doesn't want to gild the lily.

48
00:16:49,377 --> 00:16:50,994
He doesn't want to gild the lily.

49
00:16:56,978 --> 00:16:58,497
We don't want to gild the lily.

50
00:17:04,631 --> 00:17:06,248
They don't want to gild the lily.

51
00:17:12,366 --> 00:17:20,509
It doesn't want to gild the lily.

52
00:17:25,920 --> 00:17:47,039
Good job! The last thing I mentioned
there, if you want to learn more
about these sorts of spoken
contractions, go to
www.AussieEnglish.com.au and get my
spoken English course where I go
through all these sorts of auxiliary
verb and small words like 'to' and
'of' and how they get contracted in
sentences and, you know, you can
improve your rhythm, your spoken
English by learning these tricks and
tips.

53
00:17:47,280 --> 00:18:11,862
But what I want to point out here is
the fact that you won't hear a hard T
in any of those sentences. So,
despite there being a number of Ts in
each of these sentences, right?
'Don't', 'want', 'to', and even the
word 'it', at the end there, when I
use the pronoun 'it', you'll notice
that none of the T's are actually
said like a sound, right?

54
00:18:12,000 --> 00:18:38,970
So, even when I say that last phrase
'it doesn't wanna gild the lily', you
won't hear any hard T, right? So,
there so there's two things that are
happening there. Firstly, in the case
of 'it', because there's a D that
comes after it. I'm not releasing
that stomp consonant T, so instead of
saying 'it doesn't', I say 'it
doesn't', and I go straight into the
D instead of releasing the T.

55
00:18:39,900 --> 00:18:58,302
And in terms of the T at the ends of
the words 'doesn't' and 'want',
because there's an N there before the
T, I do the same thing, where I don't
pronounce the T, I leave it
unreleased, 'doesn't', 'want'. So,
you don't even hear it, 'it doesn't
want'.

56
00:18:59,250 --> 00:19:21,569
And the last thing with 'want to ',I
could say 'want to' or 'want to',
although that just... It sounds way
too enunciated, but I would join
these words and you'll hear them as
'wanna', 'wanna', right? The Ts are
muted, they're not said there at all,
'wanna'. It doesn't want to gild the
lily.

57
00:19:22,430 --> 00:19:43,950
Alright, so I'm going to go through
this exercise one more time, guys,
but if you want to learn more about
contractions, sign up to my Spoken
English Course. And if you want to
understand the pronunciation of the
different sounds in English, you get
my pronunciation course, the
Australian Pronunciation course,
those two have helped hundreds of
people and they will help you too if
you're having trouble with these
aspects of pronunciation.

58
00:19:44,310 --> 00:19:46,859
Let's do this exercise one more time,
guys and we'll finish up.

59
00:19:47,850 --> 00:19:49,709
I don't want to gild the lily.

60
00:19:55,100 --> 00:19:56,668
You don't want to gild the lily.

61
00:19:56,851 --> 00:19:58,517
She doesn't want to gild the lily.

62
00:20:04,583 --> 00:20:12,704
He doesn't want to gild the lily.

63
00:20:18,170 --> 00:20:19,689
We don't want to gild the lily.

64
00:20:20,047 --> 00:20:28,110
They don't want to gild the lily.

65
00:20:33,630 --> 00:20:35,970
It doesn't want to gild the lily.

66
00:20:41,400 --> 00:21:06,869
Awesome work, guys. Keep it up, keep
practicing all the time. Listen to
this episode quite a few times as I
realize when writing this I have used
a lot of different expressions in
here, ok? So, it might take you a few
times listening to get your head
around, to wrap your head around
quite a few of those different
expressions, but it's a gold mine
this episode. There are at least, I
think, probably 15 or 20 different
good English expressions in here.

67
00:21:07,320 --> 00:21:14,642
Aside from that, keep your eyes
peeled for the next episode on bush
medicine, ok? Till then, I'll see you
later. Peace!

68
00:21:20,096 --> 00:21:58,299
G'day, mate! Thanks for listening to
the Aussie English podcast! If you'd
like to boost your English whilst
also supporting the podcast and
allowing me to continue to bring you
awesome content every single week,
please consider joining the Aussie
English Academy at
www.AussieEnglish.com.au . You'll get
unlimited access to the premium
podcast as well as all of my advanced
English courses and you'll also be
able to join three weekly speaking
calls with a real English teacher.
Thanks so much mate and I'll see you
soon.