Say, Bob Crowley---question for you! :)

Wolseley · Jan 26, 2023

So, I've been watching "McLeod's Daughters" with Momma for about the last month or so. (For those of you who don't know, it's an Australian TV series about two young women who inherit a cattle ranch from their deceased father, and decide to run it themselves, along with their female cook and two teenaged girls. It's pretty much a "chick flick", but it has its moments, and it's entertaining.)

Anyway, I had problems the first few episodes trying to adjust my ear to the Down Under accents, but I eventually got used to them. My wife didn't have any problem with the accents, but the slang, she was totally unfamiliar with; I knew a lot of the expressions through reading, though, so I'd have to translate for her. In one episode, a character is invited to "sit down and have some brekkie." She said, "What's that?", and I said, "Have some breakfast." Another common term is "yewtee"; I had to explain to her that it was short for "utility truck", or what we would call a pickup truck.

Practically every episode was like that---I knew the words and would have to translate for her: "gone crook" means gotten sick; "off to kip" means going to bed; a "tyke" is a dog; "skippy" is slang for a kangaroo; a "bludger" is a freeloader; "chooks" are chickens; "gear" means clothing; "wallopers" are police officers; "mozzies" are mosquitoes; a "jumpbuck" is a sheep; a "concession" is a discount sale; "arvo" and "evo" are afternoon and evening, and a "two-pot screamer" is a guy who can't handle his liquor.

She eventually caught on to most of it, although now and again she'll ask me what something means. And I'll admit that every so often, I'll have to look one up for myself. The other night somebody mentioned a "bickie", which I knew meant "biscuit", or what we would call a cookie---but the context wasn't right; I didn't know that it was also slang for an Australian one-dollar bill until I looked it up.

Anyway, my question is, if you watch American TV shows, do you have problems with the accents or deciphering our slang at all? I'm just curious.

Michie · Jan 26, 2023

Wolseley said:
So, I've been watching "McLeod's Daughters" with Momma for about the last month or so. (For those of you who don't know, it's an Australian TV series about two young women who inherit a cattle ranch from their deceased father, and decide to run it themselves, along with their female cook and two teenaged girls. It's pretty much a "chick flick", but it has its moments, and it's entertaining.)

Anyway, I had problem the first few episodes trying to adjust my ear to the Down Under accents, but I eventually got used to them. My wife didn't have any problem with the accents, but the slang, she was totally unfamiliar with; I knew a lot of the expressions through reading, though, so I'd have to translate for her. In one episode, a character is invited to "sit down and have some brekkie." She said, "What's that?", and I said, "Have some breakfast." Another common term is "yewtee"; I had to explain to her that it was short for "utility truck", or what we would call a pickup truck.

Practically every episode was like that---I knew the words and would have to translate for her: "gone crook" means gotten sick; "off to kip" means going to bed; a "tyke" is a dog; "skippy" is slang for a kangaroo; a "bludger" is a freeloader; "chooks" are chickens; "gear" means clothing; "wallopers" are police officers; "mozzies" are mosquitoes; a "jumpbuck" is a sheep; a "concession" is a discount sale; "arvo" and "evo" are afternoon and evening, and a "two-pot screamer" is a guy who can't handle his liquor.

She eventually caught on to most of it, although now and again she'll ask me what something means. And I'll admit that every so often, I'll have to look one up for myself. The other night somebody mentioned a "bickie", which I knew meant "biscuit", or what we would call a cookie---but the context wasn't right; I didn't know that it was also slang for an Australian one-dollar bill until I looked it up.

Anyway, my question is, if you watch American TV shows, do you have problems with the accents or deciphering our slang at all? I'm just curious.

Now I’m curious!

@Bob Crowley

prodromos · Jan 26, 2023

I'm not Bob, and I don't watch TV anymore, but I don't remember ever having a problem understanding US TV series. I have to admit I'd never heard of "bikkie" referring to a one dollar bill before, so even us Aussies may not be up with all the slang.

Wolseley · Jan 26, 2023

Good on ya, mate!

Bob Crowley · Jan 27, 2023

We're probably far more attuned to American accents than Americans are to ours.

If anything our slang has become less colloquial because of US dominance in the media. I remember reading somewhere that a migrant from Britain used to spend half his time laughing at the colourful language Australians used, but that was a long time ago.

I haven't heard of "bikkie" meaning a single Australian dollar, but if somebody said something cost "big bikkies" I'd know they meant it was expensive. It could be a "big biscuit", but that's unlikely.

There's a list of some Aussie slang here, but there'll be more if you go looking for it.

100+ Australian Slang Words to Help You Speak Like a True Aussie

You don’t really know a language until you’ve learned its slang. And when it comes to English, many people agree that Australian slang is the richest, liveliest and funniest slang you could learn. Sure, there’s always British English, but the Brits don’t call their barbecue “barbie”. And that’s...

www.mondly.com

Looking at Number 20 viz. 20. cabbie – taxi driver, and since this is mostly an American forum, I remember a Telstra ad (Australia's largest telecommunications provider) on the TV which had a bit of a poke at American naivete.

An American bloke hops into a "water taxi" ie. "water cabbie" and says "Gold Coast, and make it snappy!". We know he's American because of his accent.

The water cabbie repeats "Gold Coast?" just to make sure he's got it right.

"Yep" says the Yank. "Righto Mate!" says the cabbie and they cast off.

Then the camera pans up to show the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Obviously they're in Sydney Harbour.

The Gold Coast is in southern Queensland, and is supposed to be 683 kilometres (369 nautical miles) due north from Sydney.

That's a long way on the open ocean for a water cabbie! It would have been a good fare!

He probably thought the passenger had a few "kangaroos in the top paddock"!

have kangaroos in (one's)/the top paddock
To act, think, or behave in an eccentric, foolish, or nonsensical manner; to be insane. Primarily heard in Australia.Tommy must have kangaroos in the top paddock if he thinks he can convince Mom to let him get a tattoo for his birthday.There's an old lady who stands on the corner yelling at strangers all day. I think she might have kangaroos in her top paddock.

Bob Crowley · Jan 27, 2023

If anything our slang has become less colloquial because of US dominance in the media.

Referring to my comment above which I lifted from my preceding post, in "TV Week" which is a local television magazine, open air TV included the following American shows today in our area -

Movie "I still know what you did last summer"
Movie "Driven"
Movie "Five Flights Up"
Movie "The Book of Eli"
Series "The Good Doctor"
Movie "The Vow"
Series "New Amsterdam" (US?)
Series "The Bold and the Beautiful"
Series "Judge Judy"
Comedies "Becker", Frasier", "Friends", "Seinfeld", "The King of Queens", "The Middle", "The Big Bang Theory", "Two and a Half Men", "The Goldbergs", "My Name is Earl", "My Favourite Martian"
Series "The Love Boat"
Series "MacGyver"
Series "Start Trek - the Next Generation"
Series "JAG"
Series "Bull"
Series "NCIS" & "NCIS Los Angeles"
Cartoons "South Park" (and usually "The Simpsons", "Family Guy", "Cleveland", "American Dad")
Series "American Pickers"
Series "Pawn Stars"
Movie "Just Cause"
Series "American Restoration"
Movies "The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants", "Wild Wild West", "Deuce Brigalow - Male Gigolo", "Last Vegas"
Series "The Real Housewives of Orange County" (and every other version of these overblown females).

I've sure I've missed some in my list, but that's just Open Air TV for today.

That's not including all the pay TV channels with their choices, many of them American. We don't have pay TV ourselves as we're not interested. I don't watch a lot of television, and if I do it's usually one of the British police series. I watched "Endeavour" tonight for example.

So we're a lot more familiar with American accents and slang than Americans would be with the Australian version. How many Australian shows would be on your Open Air TV in a 24 hour period?

Wolseley · Jan 27, 2023

Probably not too many, Bob. I've seen plenty of Aussie movies, but I think "McLeod's Daughters" is the only Australian TV series I've ever run across. It looks like you have access to a lot of American stuff (some of it good, some of it not so good, IMHO), more than we have access to yours.

It's interesting that you listed "JAG" above. I remember the character of Commander Mic Brumby on that show (quite a name---a wild horse, LOL) played by British/Australian actor Trevor Goddard, now lamentably deceased. There were some episodes that took place in Sydney, where they were investigating the death of an American sailor who fell into the harbor and was eaten by the sharks. Lt. Bud Roberts blinked a couple times and said, "You have sharks in the harbor???", and Brumby replied, "This is Australia, mate---there's sharks in the bloody bathtub!" I just about died laughing on that one.

Bob Crowley · Jan 27, 2023

While sharks in the bathtub is an exaggeration (they can't get past the plug hole - sometimes you can see an eye looking up at you though), there are sharks in Sydney Harbour.

An Australian navy diver was attacked in 2009, and lost an arm and part of a leg in the process.

Three things I know about being attacked by a shark

"A bad day at work" — how former Australian Navy diver Paul de Gelder finds the lighter side to the terrifying experience of being mauled by a shark in Sydney Harbour.

www.abc.net.au

Incidentally the quip about the bath reminded me of another joke. Some research company wanted to find out which way people sat in the bath - with their back to the taps or the other way around.

So they asked 1000 people and the answers came back - 999 sat the other way around and only one bloke had his back to the taps (which wouldn't be very comfortable).

They were curious about this and so they contacted the bloke and and asked him why he was the only one who sat with his back to the taps and not the other way around.

"I haven't got a bath plug" he replied. :scratch:

prodromos · Jan 27, 2023

Bob Crowley said:
"I haven't got a bath plug" he replied.

The bath would get cold very quickly if you had to sit in it while it filled with water. You could only fill with warm water instead of hot.

Bob Crowley · Jan 28, 2023

On the question of sharks, there's a golf course about 30 kilometres away which has bull sharks in the water hazards.

Shark-infested course at Brisbane's Carbrook Golf Club believed to be a world first

Australia's shark-infested golf course

www.foxsports.com.au

The golf course backs onto the Logan River and they were stranded after flood waters receded some years ago.

I doubt if anyone bothers retrieving their balls from the water. There must be quite a collection in there now.

Bob Crowley · Jan 28, 2023

From Wolseley's original post - "Anyway, I had problems the first few episodes trying to adjust my ear to the Down Under accents, but I eventually got used to them. My wife didn't have any problem with the accents, but the slang, she was totally unfamiliar with ..."

One thing about the Australian accent - it's pretty much homogenous all over Australia. Some of the outback population might have a bit more of a drawl, but if you can understand the accent in Brisbane for example you'll probably find you can understand our accent anywhere.

That's not the case with a lot of other nations.

Way back in ancient history when I was still in my senior year at school I had a Christmas job at a factory. One of the staff was originally from Birmingham in England (or was it Manchester? Long time ago now). I'm hard of hearing which didn't help, but to be honest I could hardly understand a word he said!

In some nations the dialects are not understood by their fellow countrymen from other areas. I was told by someone that when the Indian Prime Minister addresses the nation for example, there are a number of different languages used to get the message out.

In 8 Indian languages, PM Modi tells diaspora everything is fine

Reassuring the community, Modi said that "everything is fine" in nearly eight languages, with US President Donald Trump present in the audience.

www.indiatoday.in

Wolseley · Jan 28, 2023

Bob Crowley said:
From Wolseley's original post - "Anyway, I had problems the first few episodes trying to adjust my ear to the Down Under accents, but I eventually got used to them. My wife didn't have any problem with the accents, but the slang, she was totally unfamiliar with ..."

One thing about the Australian accent - it's pretty much homogenous all over Australia. Some of the outback population might have a bit more of a drawl, but if you can understand the accent in Brisbane for example you'll probably find you can understand our accent anywhere.

That's not the case with a lot of other nations.

Way back in ancient history when I was still in my senior year at school I had a Christmas job at a factory. One of the staff was originally from Birmingham in England (or was it Manchester? Long time ago now). I'm hard of hearing which didn't help, but to be honest I could hardly understand a word he said!

In some nations the dialects are not understood by their fellow countrymen from other areas. I was told by someone that when the Indian Prime Minister addresses the nation for example, there are a number of different languages used to get the message out.

In 8 Indian languages, PM Modi tells diaspora everything is fine

Reassuring the community, Modi said that "everything is fine" in nearly eight languages, with US President Donald Trump present in the audience.

www.indiatoday.in

I know what you mean. Sometimes I run across British movies where the actors are speaking with the real British working-class colloquial slang, and I can't understand a thing coming out of their mouths. It is definitely not the "Received Pronunciation" usually spouted by King Charles, and that's for sure.

Here in the US of A, there seems to be approximately five major accent branches---you have New England, which would broadly be accents similar to what you hear in Maine ("Ayuh---good place for lawbstah, but y'cahn't get theah from heah").

Then what I would call New York, (encompassing Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Rhode Island) "Yo! Bring dat stuff down heah wit' cha---da whole woiks!).

Then there's Southern, running from Maryland across to Kentucky, and south to the Gulf Coast, including Texas ("Y'all come back now, y'heah?")

Midwestern, running from western Pennsylvania across the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains ("Gets hotter'n all get-out here in the summertime, mister, you betcha").

And finally West Coast, which would be everything from the Rockies to the Pacific, and it's more or less an amalgamation of all the others. And I suppose you could add Canadian to that list, as well ("Yah, sure, we're goin' oot and aboot t'day, eh?").

prodromos · Jan 28, 2023

Bob Crowley said:
Way back in ancient history when I was still in my senior year at school I had a Christmas job at a factory. One of the staff was originally from Birmingham in England (or was it Manchester? Long time ago now). I'm hard of hearing which didn't help, but to be honest I could hardly understand a word he said!

Years ago I was waiting to catch a train home in the evening, and a homeless guy struck up a conversation with me. I couldn't understand a word he was saying, and my initial thought (to my shame) was that his brain had been damaged from drinking too much alcohol.

Until I realised he was Irish!

Once I had tuned into the accent, I was able to follow what he was saying without too much trouble and ended up having a wonderful conversation with him. It completely shattered all my preconceived ideas about homeless people.

Bob Crowley · Jan 29, 2023

At one stage I used to work with an Irishman. He was a good bloke, and actually had an obituary in the The Catholic Leader (local Catholic Newspaper) after he died, which is not a common event.

But when we first started working together I had a lot of trouble understanding him. As I said above my hearing loss didn't help.

He thought I was having a go at him at one stage, but I wasn't. I just struggled with his accent.

Eventually I got used to his accent and I found it a lot easier.

We Australians don't really have much in way of regional accents, but we do have "strine" - well, some of us do.

Strine - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Strine, also spelled Stryne /ˈstraɪn/, describes a broad accent of Australian English. The term is a syncope, derived from a shortened phonetic rendition of the pronunciation of the word "Australian" in an exaggerated Broad Australian accent, drawing upon the tendency of this accent to run syllables together in a form of liaison.[1]

The term was coined in 1964[2] when the accent was the subject of humorous columns published in the Sydney Morning Herald from the mid-1960s. Alastair Ardoch Morrison, under the Strine pseudonym of Afferbeck Lauder (a syncope for "Alphabetical Order"), wrote a song "With Air Chew" ("Without You") in 1965 followed by a series of books—Let Stalk Strine (1965), Nose Tone Unturned (1967), Fraffly Well Spoken (1968), and Fraffly Suite (1969). An example from one of the books: "Eye-level arch play devoisters ..." ("I'll have a large plate of oysters").

"Did you have a good weekend?" in Strine is "didjaavagudweegend?".

I was in Toastmasters for some time, so I have two speaking voices - my Toastmasters voice when I've doing a Bible reading at mass for example, and my usual mumbly conversational semi-strine voice where my wife says "What did you say? I couldn't understand a word you said!"

Wolseley · Jan 29, 2023

LOL. I remember a phrase in Strine: "Hairzy getnon witha mowthairgin?"

Translation: "How's he getting on with the mouth organ?" (harmonica).

Then there's "S.L. packing"----or "air cell packing", what we Yanks would call "bubble wrap".

Bob Crowley · Jan 30, 2023

One item we have different terminology about is "thongs". Americans mean one thing, but we mean footwear.

One of the old standard jokes if Australians wanted to poke fun at another state was "Why do Queenslanders wear thongs?.

Answer - "Because they don't know how to tie their shoelaces".

prodromos · Jan 30, 2023

Bob Crowley said:
One of the old standard jokes if Australians wanted to poke fun at another state was "Why do Queenslanders wear thongs?.

Answer - "Because they don't know how to tie their shoelaces".

Why do Queenslanders call their beer XXXX?
Because they can't spell beer!

Bob Crowley · Jan 30, 2023

What goes around comes around!

Slang: What Aussies call other Aussies - Australian Geographic

From Cornstalks to Banana-benders, Aussies even have lingo for each other.

www.australiangeographic.com.au

Bob Crowley · Jan 31, 2023

Another list of Australian slang put out by readers or watchers of the BBC.

Australian slang: Your favourite examples

A recent Magazine article about the decline of Australian slang prompted readers to share their favourite examples.

www.bbc.com

May your chooks turn into emus and kick your dunny door down - a way of wishing someone bad luck. Doug, Sydney

The phrase above reminded me of a story I heard years ago about a government agricultural department. There was a research station which specialised in poultry, but they decided to start experimenting with either ostriches or emus - I'm not sure which. The staff used to go home with minor scratches sometimes from the chooks (chickens) but when they had to deal with emus or ostriches, they went home feeling like they'd gone three rounds with Mike Tyson.

By the way, "Dunny door" is toilet door, harking back to the days when we had outhouses instead of sewage (which we had in Brisbane when I was very young, before sewage came in during the 1960's under the leadership of Mayor Clem Jones, probably the best mayor we've had).

Wolseley · Jan 31, 2023

Bob Crowley said:
One item we have different terminology about is "thongs". Americans mean one thing, but we mean footwear.

LOL. Those cheap rubber sandals used to be called "thongs" here in the States as well, until somebody came up with the odd idea for backless women's panties and applied the same name to them. However, the usual American nickname for that specific sandal is "flip-flops", from the sound they make smacking your heel when you walk in them.

Say, Bob Crowley---question for you! :)

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