Regularly my kids will ask for songs about Australia, since 2 of my 4 daughters were born in Australia, we try and teach a bit of Australian slang every week.

For some reason I was on flagon of woobla this week.

LOL...what?....

Aboriginal slang for a "flagon" (big bottle) of "woobla" (booze), at least near Canberra.

We were at a zoo last week near the house, and they had capercailie in a pen and they were very close. Close enough that my 3 year old exlamed "crikey Dad, look at that big chook". I was pretty proud.

They were about the size of a wild turkey, and yep, they were big chooks.

I know what a flagon is, never heard of "Woobla"

GRAVEDIGGER
(indicates a skull) Here’s a skull now. This skull has lain
in the earth three-and-twenty years.

HAMLET
Whose was it?

GRAVEDIGGER
A whoreson mad fellow’s it was. Whose do you think it was?

HAMLET
Nay, I know not.

GRAVEDIGGER
A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! He poured a flagon of
Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was Yorick’s
skull, the king’s jester.

HAMLET
Let me see. (takes the skull) Alas, poor Yorick! I knew
him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent
fancy.

No offense, but the word "flagon" isn't an Australian word. Shakespeare was already dead over 150 years before Lieutenant James Cook charted the coast of Australia.

.....yes, flagon is an old word, we actually call them a "goon", short for "fla-goon"...get it ?

We also have the goon bag which is a bladder of cheap wine.

G'Day Fella's,

BWW, what about the following;
A Prang = Car Wreck or accident whilst in a motor vehicle.

Doh!
Homer

The only slang that I hear is "F*** this", "F*** that". I'm in Sydney right now and I probably heard 50 people drop the "F bomb" in conversation today and yesterday.

Dingo stole my baby

You have to give it to the Aussies!

They actually manage to speak a language most of us can understand.

One would have expected anyone living upside down to talk gibberish!

Perhaps they made up new words during the long trip over in their convict vessels so the warders couldn't understand what they were talking about !!!!
In FNQ I often used to hear the term "plagon".

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
You have to give it to the Aussies!

They actually manage to speak a language most of us can understand.

One would have expected anyone living upside down to talk gibberish!

Oh I don't know I confused Walter a few times....but sometimes that's not too hard.

quote:

Originally posted by Fjold:
The only slang that I hear is "F*** this", "F*** that". I'm in Sydney right now and I probably heard 50 people drop the "F bomb" in conversation today and yesterday.

Mate thats just how we say G'Day

quote:

Originally posted by Fjold:
The only slang that I hear is "F*** this", "F*** that". I'm in Sydney right now and I probably heard 50 people drop the "F bomb" in conversation today and yesterday.

With language that refined and civil you definitely weren't listening to Territorians!

Would they be the Caring Understanding Northern Territorians?

We might be a bit rough around the edges at times, but we have big hearts and get the job done in one of the last frontiers on Earth.

It's all comes from eating Vegemite.

quote:

Definition of Vegemite

Vegemite is an organic colloidal gel the main component of which is a eukaryotic micro-organism from the kingdom Fungi. Within certain regions of the South Pacific, Vegemite consumption is considered a ritualistic practice. Traditional Vegemite ceremonies are conducted beside a "billabong" and within the shadow of a peculiar Eucalyptus tree that ancient religious texts refer to as a "coolabah". Requisite in the Vegemite ceremony is the boiling of a "billi" containing "bush tucker" while participants dance about in waltz-like fashion and gesticulate wildly to entreat their deity, "Matilda", to appear and participate.

Modern science has shown that regular consumption of Vegemite causes several, irreversible side effects. Most widespread of these is a deterioration of the speech centers of the brain. The result is a degenerative inability to pronounce words correctly. Common manifestations of this are the use of "avago" instead of "have a go", "maccas" instead of "McDonald's", "sanger" instead of "sandwich", and "doovalacky" or "thingo" to describe nearly every object.

There are auditory complications as well. Prolonged use of Vegemite will so distort the perception of sound as to make the playing of an ancient wind instrument, the didgeridoo, sound melodic.

Aberrations of the left inner ear eventually appear and balance is affected accordingly. Over time, Vegemite eaters develop a strange sideways gait that makes them slouch to the left as they walk. They will often veer left out of their intended path and continue off course until they are brought to a halt by colliding with some object. The result is readily observed as many Vegemite eaters wear hats bent upward on the left by such collisions.

My children are proud little Aussies, made of American parts, being educated in Germany.

They ride bike, go to hospital, and give it a go. They eat sandwiches made of sourdough, vegimite, bacon, cheddar and tomatoes.

They know what a kookaburra sounds like, can sing 90% of Waltzing Matilda and I wish they would flush the dunny.

Whoever wrote the "Definition of Vegemite" has never been to Australia.

They eat brekkie, ride in a ute and spend a lot of time napping in the arvo.

....as Australians, we have an exceptional, if somewhat twisted, sense of humour and general irreverance for all things authoritarian, with the ability to laugh at ourselves in any and all situations.
I think the "The Definition of Vegemite " is very clever and frighteningly true in some aspects.

Roger

quote:

Originally posted by Big Wonderful Wyoming:
My children are proud little Aussies, made of American parts, being educated in Germany.

They ride bike, go to hospital, and give it a go. They eat sandwiches made of sourdough, vegimite, bacon, cheddar and tomatoes.

They know what a kookaburra sounds like, can sing 90% of Waltzing Matilda and I wish they would flush the dunny.

Whoever wrote the "Definition of Vegemite" has never been to Australia.

They eat brekkie, ride in a ute and spend a lot of time napping in the arvo.

An Aussie moved to Auckland and bought a house. A month after he moved in he bought a lawn mower and a long bamboo stick.

The Neighbour (me) was looking over the fence and saw Simmo the Aussie with long stockings and gumboots beating his lawn with the stick and then mowing it.

So he later asked Simmo what the stick beating of the lawn was about and if it was some ritual from back home.

Simmo replied "Nah maite, just making sure there were no brownies around".

"Brownies"? I said.

"Yey maite, those poisonous brownies are seeerious trouble." said Simmo

"Poisonous brownies?" I asked!

"Yeyh, snyiks maite" said Simmo.

"Snyiks?" I wondered and gave up.

Well, Simmo still does his lawn dance with long stocking and he is now into his third bamboo stick this year!

It seems to me that the accent and vocabulary of a new-world country pretty much comes from its European migration.

So, if America's flat A's and earnest, rolling R's come from pious East Anglians and West Country sailors of 400 years ago, the Australian twang and rhyming slang is low-class London, 1788. Even now I have to listen for a moment to some Cockneys like Michael Caine to be sure they aren't from Oz.

Speaking of measures, the aforesaid flagon is an accepted trade term here for a squat 2-litre wine bottle, most popular before the bag-in-box (goon) revolution. It is now most associated with cheap 'ports' and 'sherries', often consumed without removal from the paper bag they come in.

There is a park in Melbourne's CBD called Flagstaff Gardens but some wags call it the Flagonstaff Gardens.

First and foremost, the Australian people I met this summer were the friendliest and kindest people I have met anywhere in my travels. As an example, my hunting buddy and I were walking through Darwin and hit a construction area that we had to get through. I grabbed one of the construction workers and explained our plight. He responded with the typical "no worries" as he grabbed his supervisor. The supervisor actually walked into very fast moving traffic and stopped it for our crossing.

With that said, I am not sure I quite understand the use of the "F-bomb" as it seems to be a verb, noun, adverb, adjective, object of a preposition, pronoun, and any other required aspect of the English language.

My hunting partner said it well when he stated, "If you took away the f-word from an Australian, it would cut there conversation in half."

quote:

Originally posted by SDSpink:
First and foremost, the Australian people I met this summer were the friendliest and kindest people I have met anywhere in my travels. As an example, my hunting buddy and I were walking through Darwin and hit a construction area that we had to get through. I grabbed one of the construction workers and explained our plight. He responded with the typical "no worries" as he grabbed his supervisor. The supervisor actually walked into very fast moving traffic and stopped it for our crossing.

With that said, I am not sure I quite understand the use of the "F-bomb" as it seems to be a verb, noun, adverb, adjective, object of a preposition, pronoun, and any other required aspect of the English language.

My hunting partner said it well when he stated, "If you took away the f-word from an Australian, it would cut there conversation in half."

whoops, make that "their"...... F-bomb needed

I remember a activity in which my Australian friends said that it was probably illegal, we just didn't need to get caught. Typical of Australian understanding of rules.

You don't want to be near a bunch of Dog Handlers when we are training....ALL the popular swear words come out.

I only ever heard my father say the F word once, and he lived to 88.

We were bringing a big mob of sheep home from the back paddock and had to take them through one where there was another mob. As it happened the second lot were back over a hill, well out of sight. Trouble was, our dog knew they were there and felt he HAD to go and get them ...

It took the rest of the day to separate the two mobs by drafting at the sheep yards.

quote:

Originally posted by Bakes:
LOL...what?....

Tony, don't laugh, but Hessa still calls you Tieny!

Apparently that is how you sounded to her when you told her your name!

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:

quote:

Originally posted by Bakes:
LOL...what?....

Tony, don't laugh, but Hessa still calls you Tieny!

Apparently that is how you sounded to her when you told her your name!

I had Walter buggered when I asked him for a bottle of water. To him it sounded like I was asking for "Wadder"

Moving on from Aussie slang. Here's a little something for anyone visiting. Just so you know the correct names...

The only accent I find as pleasing as Australian English is South African English.

I was talking to some colleagues today about German and how many little dialects there are.

Here they speak Pfalzish, and one of my co-workers speaks Hessish.

I ask if they can understand one another and he says 80-90% of the time.

He ask me the same question, and I think about it for a second and another American I work with says. Probably a lot less than that.

Americans, Canadians, Brits, Kiwis, Southern African whites, East African whites and a whole big group other folks.


Just in the United States there are probably 15 different accents, in Australia there are 4 or 5 (why do most people in Perth sound English), Canada another 4 or 5 and I noticed that their might be a few Kiwi ones. Tons of people in the UK speak different accents.

Thee are accents that are a result of immigration like the North Dakota/Minnesota/Upper Penninsula one, and a lot of the populations of Central and Western Canada. There are accents derived famous people like the ones found in New England, and there are accents that have resulted in wars.

There are accents I don't like the sound of, and some that I do.

I think regular every day communication between Western Americans, and Mid-Western Americans to those that live in the South can be challenging. The beloved Newfie, Scotsman, and Van Demonian (Tasmanian), can also be hard to figure out.

The hardest ones are people that live in remote areas (doesn't matter where) and only speak to 10-20 people on a regular basis. I met the wife of this farmer in Australia that was from Australia, and she was almost incomprehensable. She only ever spoke to about 10-20 people other than twice a month shopping.

My wife is from Southern California, she is kind of an "Educated Valley Girl", as she is a Master Teacher, Fluent in Spanish and has taught all over the world.

Our little house English is a mix of Rocky Mountain English, South West, Canberra Australian (as we are trying to keep our little Aussie Anchor Babies involved in some kind of Australian culture), and whatever German or Spanish words come into the conversation.

quote:

Originally posted by Bakes:
Moving on from Aussie slang. Here's a little something for anyone visiting. Just so you know the correct names...

Always made me sad to kill a huntsman if I couldn't catch the bastard to move him outside. The rest never got a second thought. Especially the mouse spiders, funnel webs, and redbacks.

The only accent I can pick is a South Australian. And thats because they say Dance and Chance like a stuck up POM.

Bakes,

Do you reckon that people from Perth sound like POMs?

I think the nicest Australians I have ever met were from Queensland. Tasmanians are probably right up there, but effing weird.

Damn near everyone in Queensland must have worked at Disneyland and fired for being too nice. The majority of Australians are a lot nicer than the Majority of Americans.

People in the Southern USA always speak of Southern Hospitality, I have never experienced it like they talk about. I guess it is my Western USA Accent.

I have actually met a lot of nice people in New England, maybe because I don't have a Southern accent.

Canberra is a weird place, legal to smoke pot, tons of prostitute houses, and people who think they are a really wonderful part of the Australian governmental scene.

I have wonderful friends in Canberra, saying that but even they think it is weird.

Yeah I spent quite a few years in Canberra. It is a little strange. Being in the RAAF I work with a lot of people from all states, so I don't think I can pick an accent. Generally you know where people come from by what they call things.

Stobie pole instead of power pole (South Australia)
Middy in NSW, pot in QLD
Potato cake in the southern states- potato scallop in the good states.

quote:

Originally posted by Bakes:
The only accent I can pick is a South Australian. And thats because they say Dance and Chance like a stuck up POM.

That's probably because SA was settled by gentlemen of capital, unlike NSW and Tassie, which got convicts. WA may have had some sort of orderly settlement, too, possibly explaining any uppity accent. Victoria was settled by opportunists, initially whalers-cum-squatters, then silly buggers looking for gold. Despite being just over the border from SA, I think the Western District in Victoria has the flattest A's (as in apple) in the country, esp. around Koroit, which was settled by the Irish.

NZ and Australia - two countries separated by the Queens English