Thursday, September 18, 2008

Australian English 101

This morning is the beginning of my second full day in Pinjarra here in Western Australia. The people are great and from the minute I touched down in the airport I've been picking up on the easy-going, laid back, conversational nature of folks here. The pastor and wife with whom I am staying are sociable, kind, learned, and hospitable people, and the folks I've met so far at the meeting house (literally called that in this case) are also very friendly.

Yesterday morning when I spoke to the ladies' group I felt the time went reasonably well. I didn't feel as good about the meeting last night, however, as I stuttered and stammered throughout that particular talk, which I was giving for the first time (going too long in the process). Things will go smoother next week when i give it again.

I'm being exposed to a lot of  Australian English/slang already. Just a few of the dozen or more new terms I've begun hearing already:

Barrack - cheer or root for a sporting team or someone in general (eg. rugby league or Aussy rules football)

Biscuit: Cookie

Dinky-di : the real thing, genuine

Maccas (pronounced. "mackers") : McDonald's

Mob: Group of person or things (not necessarily unruly).

Rockmelon: Canteloupe

Tomato Sauce: Ketchup

Anyway, in spite of the obvious differences, it'll still be easier to learn some of these terms than my present task of learning the Taiwanese language, which I need to take a little time to tackle now that I'm finished with this blog entry.

3 comments:

Tom Siwicki said...

how would you then ask for "ketchup" if that is what you wanted for your fries?

Mark said...

You'd ask them to pass the tomato sauce. For your spaghetti, you'd ask for spaghetti or pasta sauce or some other name, which I haven't encountered yet.

Amrita said...

Found that very interesting TP specially the slangs. I had a lot of Aussie friends when I was teaching in the MK school.Learning their "language" was reall good.I taught Aussie kids to.

In India too tomato sauce and ketchup mean the same thing.