BS: more Australian words

Subject: BS: more Australian words
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 05 Sep 07 - 02:08 PM

Logophiles will recall the nice thread we had on Australian words a few weeks ago. Well, I've read another book by the same author, Kerry Greenwood. Again it's set in Melbourne, but this time the time is 1928. So now the words are long ago and far away, at least from me. Again, feel free to explain or discuss the words I found novel.

1. The main character, Phryne, is examining an old Worth gown on the rag & bones man's cart.

'How much would you charge for it in the shop?'
'Two pounds, maybe three if the customer was exigent. Solly [owner] believes in spoiling the Egyptians.'

Egyptians?

2. An old sailor says 'the cook locked me in the stokehole when I went troppo.'

Troppo? any relation to 'allegro non troppo'?

3. Both he and Bert were fast asleep before he could start the bonzer new taxi.

Bonzer?

4. He did a sneak on us and got on the Fitzroy cocktails.

F. cocktails?

5. We should have turned him over to the Salvos.

6. Dot shrugged. 'The only cocktails I ever heard about were Mr. Butler's - onions, frankfurters and hats.'

Do people in Australia really eat hats?

7. Then they [pirates] take up a cargo contract from Honkers, say, they deliver it and then they sell the ship.'

Honkers?

8. It's not a bad waratah,' he said grudgingly, inspecting the drawing.

What's a waratah?

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Geordie-Peorgie
Date: 05 Sep 07 - 02:58 PM

"Troppo (tropical)" - Going mental (as with the heat in the tropics) ??

"Bonzer" - Always known this as a word for 'good'

"Honkers" Hong Kong! Also Honky Fid, Slopehead City, Chinese Tenerife!

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: John O'L
Date: 05 Sep 07 - 07:50 PM

Also,

5. Salvos - Salvation Army - God-botherers who do a lot of good work for the underpriviledged, and who tend to get a good deal of respect for it.

6. Little paper hats & umbrellas used as swizzle sticks or decorations in or on cocktails.

8. A Waratah is a great big red flower that grows on a stem about six feet tall. Beautiful. The emblemic flower of NSW.

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: John O'L
Date: 05 Sep 07 - 08:00 PM

A waratah

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Rowan
Date: 05 Sep 07 - 08:57 PM

Waratah. Proteaceae family, like banksias and grevilleas.

Fitzroy in the 1920s was very much a hangout of what these days would be called spivs.

The previous postings have got the others right but I can't help with "Egyptians" as a colloquialism. In 1970s Fitzroy I remember having dinner with some friends and we got to talking about the use of newspapers under lino floor coverings and the sorts of things people had found in them. We noticed that the lino of the room we were dining in had an edge that could be lifted so we checked to see if there was anything underneath it. What we found was a newspaper from 1930. The only info I can now remember was that it contained a review of "Mr Hardy's latest novel" (I forget which one, although it was clearly Thomas Hardy who was being described) and the sports pages. These contained a large number of terms that obviously were well understood in 1930 but which were completely foreign to us; the only one I remember was "fork" meaning a jockey.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Metchosin
Date: 05 Sep 07 - 11:20 PM

I think "spoiling the Egyptians" means extracting as much from a deal as you possibly can. I think it might be a Christian reference regarding the Exodus, with a hint of irony attached. At least that would be my Canadian take on it.

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: John O'L
Date: 06 Sep 07 - 01:27 AM

I think you're probably on the right track there Metshosin, it's not so much the word "Egyptians" than needs explaining as the phrase "spoiling the Egyptians".

(I've never heard it, so I can't explain it. I just thought I'd weigh in with my twopence-worth.)

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: JennieG
Date: 06 Sep 07 - 03:49 AM

It's a long shot, but "Egyptians" may have been sort-of-backwards slang for gypsies. Gypsies = gypos = Egyptians. I can vaguely remember hearing my father refer to gypsies as "gypos", he hailed from Melbourne. Don't know how it fits in the story though.

Australia has regional variations of slang; terms understood in Melbourne, Victoria were unknown in Tamworth, northern New South Wales, where I grew up.

leeneia, what's the name of the story you are reading?

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 06 Sep 07 - 09:51 AM

It's 'Away with the Fairies' by Kerry Greenwood. It's detective fiction.

Thanks for all the comments. So Fitzroy is a town, then?

John O'L, thanks for the picture of the watarah. Long ago I saw an article in National Geographic about the extraordinary plants to be seen in Australia. Fascinating!

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: The Walrus
Date: 06 Sep 07 - 10:18 AM

"..."Honkers" Hong Kong! Also Honky Fid, Slopehead City, Chinese Tenerife! ..."

'Honkers' is not, I believe, technically an Australianism.

I seem to recall (many years ago), an old chap, who as a young man, used have some dealings with the Far East and who tended to refer to "Honkers, Ranggers, Shangers and Singapops" (Hong Kong, Rangoon, Shanghai & Singapore")
Apparently it was some slang terms he'd picked up many years before.
(It's amazing the rubbish that bubbles up from memories you never knew you had).

W

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Rowan
Date: 06 Sep 07 - 06:42 PM

Leenia, Fitzroy is one of the inner (and northern) suburbs of Melbourne, only a stone's throw from the CBD. In the 1940s, part of it was a slum area with the highest population density in Oz; two storey terrace houses with a frontage of as little as 10' and rarely more than 16', containing rooms where residents didn't rent a room or even a bed, but an eight hour shift in the bed. What running water there was in such houses was usually limited to an outside tap over a gully trap, The bathroom was usually in a lean-to at the rear of the house.

Kids there grew up tough but part of a close-knit working class community. Similar (but not quite as bad) conditions occurrred in the surrounding suburbs away from the CBD area (although young people now would be surprised at how much there has changed too) and most of the slum clearances in the 60s occurred outside of Fitzroy itself. Those suburbs got the high rise concrete blocks while Fitzroy retained most of its houses, which were favoured by uni students in the 60s and 70s. Many of these stayed on and gentrified the place.

Frank Hardy's book "The power and the glory", while centred on Collingwood (a similar and adjacent suburb), would give you some of the flavour of Fitzroy in the 30s and 40s.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: John O'L
Date: 06 Sep 07 - 07:37 PM

Walrus, "Honkers" always seemed to me more English than Australian. When I was there (in England) in the late '80s I dossed on the floor of a Pom who shortened (or lengthened) most names with an "ers". Henry bacame "Henners", for example.
The Australian way is with "o" or "y". Hong Kong would thus become "Honko". (Not "Honky". There are no rules that I know of, but common sense would preclude "Honky" surely.)

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Kent Davis
Date: 06 Sep 07 - 09:57 PM

"Spoiling the Egyptians" refers to Exodus 12:35-36. When the Hebrew slaves were finally let go, they left taking with them many valuables from their former masters: "And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: And the LORD gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required. And they spoiled the Egyptians."
Thus the owner (in the first quote of the thread) who "believes in spoiling the Egyptians" believes in getting whatever he can get.

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: JennieG
Date: 06 Sep 07 - 10:00 PM

Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher series is set in Melbourne in the 1920s. Phryne has her own website which includes a glossary: Phryne

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 06 Sep 07 - 10:36 PM

G'day JennieG (and leeneia),

That Glossary is interesting and handy for leeneai's list. Interestingly, it doesn't cover "spoiling the Egyptians" or "Honkers" ... probably because both were seen as not being "Australianisms". I certainly always thought og "Honkers" as an affected Englishism for Hong Kong ... and, as Kent Davis suggests, "spoiling the Egyptians" is biblical.

Rowan's details on Fitzroy (the inner-Melbourne suburb) were interesting ... but didn't really cover "Fitzroy cocktail" (but the Glossary does!). I automatically took it to be a rough alcohol mixture ... usually 'metho (methylated spirits) plus something to disguise the sickening taste of turpentine, which had been substituted for the poisonous methyl alcohol (what the Americans generally call 'wood alcohol') so the drinkers only felt ill - but didn't die (... often ...).

In Sydney the equivalent would be a "white lady" - metho and milk (and, these days, the brand name of a low-price funeral service!).

Regards,

Bob (who has spent spent a night or two sleeping rough on a park bench in Fitzroy Gardens!)

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Rowan
Date: 07 Sep 07 - 03:57 AM

You would have been a bit south of Fitzroy, Bob, if you'd stayed in the Fitzroy Gardens as they're just east of the CBD. And I bet you fed the possums. ?   Or did you shelter in Captain Cook's Cottage.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Splott Man
Date: 07 Sep 07 - 03:58 AM

One I heard last night from Cloudstreet.

Manchester is used as a generic term for things like bedsheets, pillows, and towels.
You go into a department store, and the sign may say "Manchester upstairs".

I'd not heard of this before, is it used anywhere in the UK?

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 07 Sep 07 - 09:40 AM

G'day Rowan,

No ... a friend and I lobbed into Melbourne, by 'bus down from Sydney, hoping to grab a seat on the Princess of Tasmania - first to walk through the Cradle Mt/Lake St Clair NP - then hitch-hike around Tasmania. Unfortunately, it was between Christmas and New Year (1964) ... and Melbourne was SHUT! We had to kill time until the shipping office opened ... and a bench in Fitzroy Gardens dealt with accommodation until we found the YHA. Capt. Cook's Cottage was firmly locked ... and we clearly didn't have anything worth a possum's effort to steal.

Maybe, if we had found our way out to Fitroy we might have gotten cheap digs (in the students' absence)... but we were sticking as close as we could to the vicinty of the shipping office!

Regardfs,

Bob

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Greg B
Date: 07 Sep 07 - 11:52 AM

I don't know, but when I was a tyke my parents took me to the
drive-in theater to see Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in 'The Road
To Hong Kong.'

Being maybe three years old at the time, I of course put my
own spin on the name.

Until it was torn down in favor of another shopping center,
the family referred to that particular drive-in as 'The Honk
Honk' theater.

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 07 Sep 07 - 01:56 PM

Most interesting. Fitzroy was certainly a classy name for such a dismal place.

I suppose that today 'spoiling the Egyptians' would be written as 'despoiling the Egyptians.' My Sunday School lessons failed to mention that passage. Can't imagine why.

It's nice that there is a glossary for Phryne, but asking 'catters is so much more sociable.

John O'L, you are clearly correct that the Australian way is with an O - Salvo, metho, arvo... You mentioned Y too, but the tendency to add the Y sound is common everywhere. For example, is your belly button an innie or an outie?

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Gurney
Date: 07 Sep 07 - 06:35 PM

That 'Manchester' term for bedlinen puzzled me when I first arrived in Godzone, too, along with many terms they/we share with Oz.
Another puzzler was the sign 'Choice' on fruit and vegetables. To a Pom it means option or select, but many of the fruiterers were Chinese, and it had come to mean 'good quality.'

Godzown =Gods Own Country = NZ.
Oz = Australia or Australian.
Manchester = Manchester Ware, I think. Most Commonwealth cotton goods were made there.

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 07 Sep 07 - 08:04 PM

Choice is a quality term in the U. S. and Canada, esp. on canned fruits; fancy (top), choice (good), and standard (bottom quality but acceptable). Choice = U. S. grade B but 'choice' is how it is usually labeled.

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Rowan
Date: 07 Sep 07 - 08:23 PM

While it obviously contains lots of argot used in the Victoria of the 1920s I suspect the glossary given by Kerry Greenwood for her Phryne series may include some of her own inventions. As a young lad I was well aware of "gypsies" as a minority in the community and many of the attitudes of the dominant community were the same as those from Britain. Unsurprising, given that's where both communities had come from. I've never heard of the phrase "spoiling the Egyptians" being used outside Kerry Greenwood's book, although her research may have been more intense and/or from a different context.

Similarly for "Fitzroy cocktails". Leenia is correct in her association of the name Fitzroy with "classiness". This expression relies for its impact on metho-based drinking encapsulating the tension between Fitzroy as an indigent area associated with the 'upperclassness' of cocktails. While the Fitzroy of the 40s was a slum area, much of it was 'upper but not wealthy' middle class in the 1890s and it was still very respectable in the 1920s. I can recall the same type of tension used when referring to one of Melbourne's two shanty towns that were still operating in the mid 50s.

One was "Debney's Paddock", located in North Melbourne on the banks of the Maribyrnong River; it was demolished after the residents had been moved into the new concrete Housing Commission towers that still poke the North Melbourne skyline. The other was "Camp Pell"; now there's a name to conjure with. [ In-joke for Australians with an interest in religious politics.]

Camp Pell was north of Faulkner and well outside the limits of suburbia; a very dim memory associates its location with that of the encampment where much of the 24th Bttn of the 1st AIF enlisted during WWI. What may interest some from Oz is that, when the Melbourne Olympics were ended (our spring in 1956), the residents of Camp Pell were relocated into the Olympic Village, which had been built by the Housing Commission for this purpose; these were detached and semidetached houses though, rather than towers. But still concrete. Although all the residents were 'white' rather than Aboriginal, the papers all ran stories about how these people abused their housing by doing the sorts of things that, a generation later, Aborigines were accused of doing. By the same papers. A new High School was built for the offspring of the Olympic Village residents and it took a generation before West Heidelberg High lost its "don't send your kids there" reputation.

And guess what the favourite drink attributed to Camp Pell residents was called?
Camp Pell cocktails! The name rolls off the tongue more euphonoiusly than the one associated with Fitzroy.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Gurney
Date: 07 Sep 07 - 08:59 PM

Q, I should be interested to know when choice came to mean good, I thought it was a specifically Antipodean expression. As I said, it took me by surprise when I first encountered it here 33 years ago.

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Amos
Date: 07 Sep 07 - 09:05 PM

It is a common usage that a thing being promoted as best of its kind is referred to as "choice" -- most commonly applied to cuts of meat, as far back as I remember, and then expanding outward to fine wines, vacation destinations, and the like.


A

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Amos
Date: 07 Sep 07 - 09:05 PM

Oh, and thanks for all those Austrian soljers, you-all.

G.W.B.

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 07 Sep 07 - 09:53 PM

Gurney, if you google, you will find that South Africa also uses these terms.
This link is to a pineapple canner in Hawaii which I selected because the description of the process is interesting. It is standard USA usage. They pack 'fancy' and 'choice'.
Mauiland

Here is a Canadian site. Scroll down to Minimum Grade, where fancy, choice and standard are listed.
Inspection

In the United States, the consumer meat grades are prime, choice and select.

I bought some canned apricots today, 'choice grade,' "product of U. S. A." Fancy grade is expensive, and the only real difference is appearance.

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: ad1943
Date: 08 Sep 07 - 08:13 PM

Bob Bolton


If you drank a Fitzroy Cocktail you would be as " crook as Rookwood" mate


AD

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Rowan
Date: 08 Sep 07 - 08:49 PM

For those not from Oz, Rookwood is the famous Sydney cemetery.

The relevant Victorian comment used to be (when I lived there) "Things are crook in Tallarook!" Which routinely drew the response "And there's no work in Bourke!"

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: GUEST,John Gray in Oz
Date: 08 Sep 07 - 10:11 PM

Rowan,
The army base north of Fawkner was called the "Broadmeadows Army Camp", not Camp Pell.
Camp Pell was much closer to Melbourne in Royal Park. About 500 metres from the Zoo and 2 kilometres or so from Melb city. It was erected in WWII to accommodate US troops based here. The US soldier Leonski, the "Brown-out Killer" who murdered a local girl, was based here.
After the war the camp reverted to cheap / free accommodation for poor families. I saw it when I was small and can still remember its miserableness.

JG / FME.

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: John O'L
Date: 08 Sep 07 - 11:10 PM

"...the famous Sydney cemetery."

It's actually Rookwood Necropolis. I don't mean to be picky, (well, yes, I suppose that's exactly what I mean to be) but I think it's a much nicer word.

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: JennieG
Date: 09 Sep 07 - 02:23 AM

I drive past Rookwood Necropolis on my way to work, it is looking lovely with wattles in bloom.

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 09 Sep 07 - 03:04 AM

Threadcreep here for Rowan -

Thomas Hardy died in 1928, his last novel having been published some 32 years previously (1896, 'Jude the Obscure' - dubbed by critics as 'Jude the Obscene' whereupon Hardy vowed never to write another novel and stuck to poetry instead - much to the delight of every schoolchild after). The article you saw, if it was dated 1930 and was about a new novel, would not have been Thomas Hardy. It may have been a local author - I can't find any others named Hardy who were publishing at that time. Sorry.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Rowan
Date: 09 Sep 07 - 06:49 PM

Liz
The time lapse was noticed at the time we found the article; I was no student of such literature at the time but even I knew that 1930 was 'stretching it' for a review of any novel by Thomas Hardy. While Oz was sometimes a bit slow to pick up on some OS trends I suspect literature reviews would have been quicker off the mark. At this distance I can't recall any reference to a particular novel and two years after an author's death is leaving the obits a bit late. It was certainly too early for Frank Hardy so we just left it as one of life's little mysteries.

Your post in this thread coincides with our ABC broadcasting "Under the greenwood tree" last night. I had read your (and others') posts on the music used in it in an earlier thread, along with comments about faux playing of concertinas and the disappearance of west gallery quires. The thread came back to me as I watched and comments that had intrigued me became understandable.

John O'L
Thanks for the distinction; my experiences of Sydney, while mostly pleasant, have been as an outsider and the newspapers always term it as a cemetery. The closest I've been to it is flying over it as the plane approaches Sydney and you can't read the sign from an aisle seat.

John Gray
At last I've had that particular dimness of memory clarified. While the northern suburbs were my stamping ground in the 50s I didn't really penetrate the wilds of Royal Park until the 60s, by which time the relocation had occurred. I guess the shanty town's reputation had scarred enough people to make neighbours avoid highlighting it. In my mind, the earliest references to Royal Park were the Zoo, CSL, the mental hospital and, much later, the monument to Burke and Wills set up at the notional start for their expedition. Before "Netball" there was the "Women's Basketball Centre" where the 1973 National had its reception; great floor for dancing! It was there, in 1968 I saw my first urban fox in Melbourne.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 09 Sep 07 - 10:58 PM

G'day John O'L and Rowan,

Whilst Rookwood does have a Necropolis (in the north-western corner, at the end of Necropolis Drive) the whole cemetery is known as Rookwood Cemetery ... and so identified on the street maps I have.

The local phone books have one entry for the Rookwood Necropolis and another for the Rookwood Memorial Gardens & Crematorium ... both being parts of Rookwood Cemetery.

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: John O'L
Date: 09 Sep 07 - 11:14 PM

Bob & Rowan,

I think I knew that deep down but chose to ignore it, because now that I see it articulated it comes as no surprise at all.

Apologies for my incorrect correction. I remember driving past the sign years ago, and being delighted that it had a name with such gravity. I think I probably knew even then that it only referred to one section of the whole complex.

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 09 Sep 07 - 11:42 PM

G'day again,

Looking at the large scale map of Rookwood, I notice that William Drive runs (~) north from the Necropolis then, just before Railway Street, the northern limit of the Cemetery, curves east ... before (nowadays) ending.

The angled portion, if extended, would meet the railway line suggesting that the Drive was originally the end of the railway line - conveying funeral trains, which had started from the Mortuary Station on the western side of Central Railway and, I believe, terminated at The Necropolis. The old Mortuary Station is still standing at the Central Station end, but its matching Gothic building of local sandstone from the Rookwood end was carefully taken apart in the 1960s and reassembled in Ainsley (?), a Canberra suburb, as an Anglican church.

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: JennieG
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 02:47 AM

There is an interesting book on Rookwood Cemetery/Necropolis called, from memory, "A grave look at history". I think there may have once been three train stations within the grounds of the cemetery itself? Anyway here's the link: Rookwood

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Joybell
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 04:11 AM

I grew up in a suburb not far from Fitzroy. Our tram passed through there on the way to the city. In 1950 Fitzroy was far from dismal. It was fast though. A red-light suburb of Melbourne where you saw girls leaning on lamp-posts in the middle of the day -- dressed for parties -- as my five-year-old eyes saw them. And there were Chinese medicine sellers with strange signs in their windows. There was always something going on. People dancing in the street -- or fighting. All the shops had gargoyles on their rain-spouts -- fine old stone buildings.
I loved passing through Fitzroy.
Cheers, Joy

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Rowan
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 06:49 PM

G'day Joybell,
If I remember correctly, you had been a Northcote girl and the trams to the city would have been either down High St or down St George's Rd; both would have taken you through some Fitzroy streets that had always been a bit swanky by comparison with the ones behind them and out of view of the trams. And North Fitzroy, having developed later than the main part of the suburb was always more gentrified as I recall.

But you're right about Smith St, Gertrude St and Brunswick St; never a dull moment. Even now they're good competition for the artificial Italianness that Lygon St has succumbed to.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Rowan
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 06:59 PM

The first two versions of original cemeteries (the first at Flagstaff Hill was relocated to where the Queen Vic Market now is and that one was relocated to the current Melbourne General Cemetery in Carlton) in Melbourne predated railways but when the one at Fawkner was established it was alongside a railway line and still had a mortuary platform when I last looked, although I can't recall it being used. There must have been something similar to Sydney's Mortuary Station still at Central and perhaps it was in the southern section of the rail yards east of Princes Bridge but my memory has faded on that score. Part of that area was redeveloped for the Melbourne Olympics and now has the tennis, pool and other venues.

Memory Lane has developed a few pot holes.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Joybell
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 07:05 PM

Hello Rowan, Thornbury. Our trams were the St George's Road ones. I remember double-decker buses along the High Street route. In the 1980s True-Love and I had a resident gig in a pub in Collingwood (suburb between Northcote and Fitzroy). I was welcomed back as a "local". Because I'd been a nurse I was considered special. We had some good times there.
Cheers, Joy

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: ad1943
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 09:17 PM

To Bob Bolton

Yes. The train in the 1800s left Mortuary Station at Central carrying the bodies to Lidcombe station then up the hill to Rookwood.

As you leave Lidcombe heading towards Sydney you can see where the old rail line " way" winds gently up the hill within the cemetery grounds

Things still are "crook in Tallarook and there ain't no work in Bourke "   But one can feel as " Crook as Rookwood" too

Best wishes

AD

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: goatfell
Date: 11 Sep 07 - 12:59 PM

I agree with what some people say about the Australians, why they speak in Baby talk, it's like as if there haven't prgressed since the age of 3 years old.

Chippies, Aussie,etc...

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Rowan
Date: 11 Sep 07 - 05:51 PM

Arran, it's all code to make sure you outsiders have to work at penetrating the culture and not coming across as a new chum.

But you reminded me of my favourite Irish joke, where your man visited a trick cyclist and asked "What would I be if I had an IQ of 180?"
"Ah, you'd be a psychiatrist, for sure."    [A reasonable punch line on it's own, actually.]
"And what would I be if I had an IQ of 120?"
"Oh, you'd be a univerrsity student."
"Really? And what would I be if I had an IQ of 60?"
"Don't be daft, man! You wouldn't be able to tie up your shoelaces or do up the buttons on your shirt!"

"Oh!" said your man, and thought for a moment.
"I've often wondered why Australians wear T shirts and thongs."

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: Joybell
Date: 11 Sep 07 - 06:10 PM

Arran, I first noticed a proliferation of these "ie" words about 30 years ago. Before that I can only recall "Connie" for a tram conductor. Names used to attract an "o" as in "John-o" and "Bottle-o" for the man who collected bottles, maybe from the call he used. Notable perhaps is the Welsh "Boy-o". John-o, Bill-o, Steve-o etc. are still used while Johnnie, Stevie etc. are less common.
Anyway I've always disliked the "ie" words a lot. I only use them as a joke. Some of us grew up.
Cheers Joy-O

Subject: RE: BS: more Australian words
From: goatfell
Date: 12 Sep 07 - 07:04 AM

aye some of the people from Australia but not all.

but as I have said most of you still use baby talk eg you shorten long words and lengthen short words. why.

Oh and I have been to Australia and I think it's has it's good and bad points but mind you so has everywhere else.

Tom