What's your English, Australia?

  • Australians wear thongs on their feet!

    Jesse Karjalainen, September 02, 2010

    Our first guest blog in Australian English month comes from Jesse Karjalainen about the similarities and differences between Australian and British and American English. Australian Jesse Karjalainen lives in the UK and works as a writer and editor. He also edits the online English-usage website www.whichenglish.com.

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    The Australian accent is famous the world over but, when it comes to the nuts and bolts of Australian English, not everyone is aware of how, exactly, it is different from other forms of English. The best way to explain this is to answer the question: how is it similar?

    It is a common assumption to think that Australian English is basically British English but with a deeper tan and a more easy-going attitude. Yes and no. When it comes to spelling, then yes, Australian and British English are almost identical. Apart from the odd word, both forms match closely. We have a Labor Party but write labour everywhere else. A lot of people write color even if, traditionally, it is colour, while it is not unusual to see jail spelt gaol in the newspaper. However, the similarities end when it comes to the words we use.

    Australian vocabulary is in many ways closer to American English. They share many words that are most definitely not used in the UK, such as eggplant (UK aubergine), zucchini (UK courgettes) and pants (UK trousers). Australians, too, are happy to use seemingly American words like critter, truck and gotten, which raise eyebrows in Britain. Yet Australians and Brits use words and meanings not used in the US: rubber (US eraser), jumper (US sweater) and chemist (US drug store).

    Where Australian English stands alone in the world is in its rich vernacular. These are the everyday words, meanings and expressions that exist nowhere else in the English-speaking world. One of my favourites is chook, for chicken.

    Many Australian expressions are completely baffling to visitors. They include: cark it (die), give it a burl (make an attempt), grouse (fantastic), ripper (great), hit the turps (get drunk), get the flick (get dumped), icy pole (ice lolly), lollies (sweets) and yewy (U-turn). We don’t say Hello, we say G’day. We don’t say Cheers!, we say Ta! Footie is never football. We don’t walk on the pavement or the sidewalk, but the footpath. We wear cozzies and togs, not swimsuits, and gumboots, not rubber boots.

    Sometimes things are a little upside down: the first floor in Australia is the ground floor in the UK; the second floor in Australia is the first floor in the UK. Everyone in Australia is called mate, even when you don’t like someone. And, weirdest of all, Australians wear thongs on their feet! You might know them as flip-flops.

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Latest BuzzWord | sheddie noun a person who creates a comfortable living space in a shed …

Recent Comments

  • Posted by Michael Rundell to To verb or not to verb? on September 02, 2010 Many thanks, Jonathan, for your fascinating, erudite and entertaining contribution to this debate - you should have just sent us a blog!
  • Posted by Rich to Australians wear thongs on their feet! on September 02, 2010 My first teacher of English here in Argentina was an Australian, Mrs. Lucy Colvin Martin, way back in the 'fifties. I remember it was easier for me to understand American speakers. She pronounced the word "either" or "neither" with the sound /i:/ not /ai/ like in British English.
  • Posted by Vs to Brazilian English: Brazinglish, Portenglish or Englishese? on September 02, 2010 Wow, I'm kinda shocked with this sentence written by you Stephan Hughes: «Another fun element of Portenglish/Brazinglish or whatever you might want to call it(...)» Oh c'mon son, you are a teacher and you had the gutts to say Brazinglish?! As if there was a language called Brazilian. I'm from Portugal, and I really think that those makeshift translations are more common in Brazil, I mean I don't wanna say that brazilians can't speak english, but they have loadsa difficulties that the portuguese don't have. I'm a member of a brazilian forum and sometimes I see some other members writing things like these: «Espero que ela performe hoje»; «Esse álbum debutou em número #1». Kinda weird, isn't it? Thumbs up for this article. :) (Sorry for using some slang).
  • Posted by Hassan Hamadtou to Language and words in the news – 27th August 2010 on September 02, 2010 It's really a useful tool for learning English lanugage.
  • Posted by Jonathan Marks to To verb or not to verb? on September 02, 2010 Multiple word-class membership is an essential part of the character of the English language, and has been for a very long time. And since nouns and verbs are overwhelmingly the most numerous word classes, it's not surprising that noun/verbs are particularly common. The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary for book as a noun is from the late 9th century; the earliest for book as a verb is from 966 (in the sense of 'to grant or assign land by charter'). Usually the noun came first and was subsequently verbed, but there are also cases of verbs becoming nouned. Sometimes there was quite a lengthy time lag between the two uses, sometimes not; here are a few more first citation dates from the OED. (Of course you have to bear in mind that a citation doesn't necessarily represent a widespread usage.) net: noun 825, verb 1593 drink: noun 888, verb c. 1000 draw: verb 897, noun 1663 word: noun c. 900, verb c. 1205 friend: noun c. 1000, verb 1225 count: noun 1325, verb 1325 (!) text: noun 1369, verb 1599 twitter: verb 1374, noun 1678 impact: verb 1601, noun 1781 contact: noun 1626, verb 1834 The process of taking a word from one word class and using it in another is called conversion - a poor term, I think, since you don't actually have to carry out any conversion work on the form of the word. A better term would something like redeployment, perhaps. It affects other word classes, too, besides nouns and verbs: open: adjective 825, verb c. 900, noun 1624 yellow: adjective c. 700, noun c. 700, verb c. 1050 The word but has, in its long history, been a preposition, adverb, conjunction (of course), noun and verb - most familiarly, perhaps, in no more ifs and buts and But me no buts. (Of course, any word can be used as a noun in this metalinguistic way: "You need to put a the in front of United States.") Sharon Creese (August 16) wrote about verbing: "Some [purists] think it's a lazy way of creating new words". I'd prefer to say that it's an economical way of extending the functionality of the language without needing to creating new words. In his book Lexical Priming (Routledge 2005), which is an important book and an enthralling read, Michael Hoey casts doubt on the a priori existence of word classes, suggesting that terms such as noun and verb are only labels that make generalisations from the behaviour of words and phrases, and which fit some words better than others. Apart from anything else, all this is potentially good news for learners of English, who can use lexical redeployment as a communication strategy, to compensate for lack of knowledge. For instance, if you want to tell someone that on a certain occasion you were knitting a jumper, but you don't know the word knit, you might say I was jumpering. If it's a face to face conversation and you can support what you say by miming, you'll certainly get your meaning across; otherwise, you might or you might not, but it's always worth trying (or worth a try). It can cause problems in reading, though, and for native speakers too, especially in news headlines, as Michael Rundell wrote (June 02). He quoted the classic example Foot heads arms body. Interpreting this requires quite a bit of lexical and grammatical knowledge, plus the ability to recognise Foot as the surname of a politician. You also need to read it with your ears as well as your eyes - to hear it with the right rhythm and stress - otherwise it remains a perplexing horizontal list of four words. I was recently in Whitby, a town on the Yorkshire coast which is, among other things, a fishing port. While I was trawling through the local newspaper one day, the following things happened in the space of a split second: 1 I spotted the first line of a headline: Quiet night in nets 2 I conjured up a half-formed image of a calm moonlit sea, fishermen twiddling their thumbs as they wait for the fish to swim into their nets ..... 3 I read the second line of the headline: pensioner £290,000. 4 I hurriedly recategorised nets as a verb, not a noun, and heard the headline in my head the way I needed to: Quiet night in / nets pensioner £290,000 - the layout in the newspaper militates against this division into phrases. (The lucky pensioner in question had won that sum of money in some sort of TV phone-in game show, after a last-minute decision to stay at home instead of going out somewhere.) And it's not only headlines that can mislead readers in this way. This is from a Guardian article about historian Hugh Trevor-Roper: "... over and over again, the stakes rising at each new turn of the wheel, the overconfidence engendered (at least in part) by his prodigious talents led him to court, ....." - to the courtroom, then, to fight legal battles? No, the text continues like this: "... over and over again, the stakes rising at each new turn of the wheel, the overconfidence engendered (at least in part) by his prodigious talents led him to court, and eventually to encounter, disaster." Well, I'm shocked (I'm in a state of shock) to see how long this little note has grown. Time to halt (time to call a halt). Finally, though, here's another memento from Yorkshire, a sign by the roadside at the exit from a quarry in the Yorkshire Dales, reminding lorry drivers to secure their load of stone (the stone they've loaded) before setting off on their journey: Have you sheeted? (sheet: noun 725, verb 1606: when Snow the Pasture sheets - Shakespeare, no less!)
Open Dictionary | duopoly noun situation where two people / organizations are in control - a 'monopoly' of two

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