Aussie/American English
 

I sort of hijacked another thread with the question below (sorry Richard.) So here it is - in it's own thread...

It's amazing to me that Aussies, Poms & Yanks all speak English, yet at times, each variant of English can sound so utterly foreign!

Many Aussie phrases and sayings are confusing to Americans (steak & kidney, she'll be apples, gaol, on ya, back of bourke, etc. etc.) I'm curious, are there any American words or phrases that are confusing to Australians?

Not the phrases John - only the Americans themselves :0)

Probably not as many as you might think, John. But I guess that's true not only of Australia but anywhere in the world. I recall that in the 1960s, even the kids in Yokohama knew American slang. Out in the Jaisalmer desert last year, the kids knew only a couple of words of English, but "okay" and "Coca-Cola" fell easily from their lips.

I think Hollywood, and now TV, has done a very good job of educating us all into the idiosyncracies of American speech. Most kids in Australia would know American slang better than the Aussie examples you've quoted above.

Fortunately, John, you won't come across a lot of the usages that make their way into supposed guides to "Aussie slang". I've read of "steak and kidney" as rhyming slang for "Sydney", for instance, but never once heard it used. In any event, true rhyming slang uses only the first word, as in "Noah's" for "shark", and I don't think anyone's ever talked about going to Steak for the weekend.

I suspect that a lot of this stuff is promoted by insecure Australians desperately trying to hang on to our individuality, travel guides trying to convince tourists that their destination is truly exotic, or just mischievous buggers taking the piss out of visitors.

As for Americana, Liz is closest to the mark, I think. While a few local terms might escape us, it's more likely to be American customs that confuse - one example being the ceremonies and traditions surrounding high school, with caps and gowns for "graduation" (we don't graduate, we just leave, or possibly piss off) and use of terms like "sophomore" and "valedictorian". Even more puzzling is to see a film in which a high school senior is addressed as "Mr" by his teacher, or a father as "sir" by his offspring.

Or am I taking too much from Hollywood depictions, just as many Americans expect the average Australian to live in the Outback and talk like Paul Hogan? Compare and discuss.

PS: "jail" is the preferred spelling in most Australian publications.

My boyfriend definitely throws me more for a loop by slang than I do him, but not by much. What we're finding out as we start to meld our lives more and more, is that there is a difference in a lot of lifestyle jargon. Things like when we were talking retirement he was mentioned superannuation. I just went "huh?" Likewise, I don't think he knew what a 401K was.

I do manage to stump him once in a while, but can't remember which words they were. I do remember the first time he goofed and used the American term for something...it just slipped out naturally and freaked him out. He said something like "Where's the parking lot?" His eyes grew big and he retracted and exclaimed "Car park! I meant car park!" I laughed and said "No, you said parking lot! You're becoming American!!!"

I think the poor boy was a bit traumatized after that. :)

Just thought of the friend back from a stint in Washington DC who was convinced that he hadn't taken on board any Americanisms, and in the next breath said "cellphone" instead of "mobile".

Then there's "skip" vs. "dumpster". But that's the sort of thing we hear all the time on TV, where the main function of a dumpster is to accommodate corpses and body parts.

Reminds me of recently spending some time hanging around the local hospital's emergency department, where I got talking to a recently arrived nurse from New Orleans. She was still coming to terms with the fact that in a whole month she hadn't seen a single gunshot wound. I had to tell her that most of her Canberra Hospital colleagues probably hadn't ever seen one. Well, we all know that N. O. is a lively town.

John, Yes, there are plenty of words and phrases which are used by Americans frequently, but which confuse Aussies, e.g.
-Pissed: to an Aussie, how you feel after a night on the turps, not 'angry'.
-first floor: an Aussie will go up one flight of stairs every time, only to find the second floor.
-gas: not petrol, rather something that gives relief after a night on the turps.
-Lite beer; to an Aussie, a beer that is low in alchol, not calories.

I think we're pretty aware of above examples and there are a couple of US words which could be considered somewhat vulgar, namely "root" and "fanny", especially as in "fanny pack". The word "quite" as used by Americans seems to cause some confusion, if an Australian is told that his kids, clothes, house, car, etc are "quite nice" he/she won't necessarily be impressed, it just means verging on the OK.

Neil, children addressing the father as "sir" (and the mother as "maam") was common prior to the 1960's, rare in the 70's & 80's and practically non-existent today, except in the South (southeastern states.) I was raised by my grandparents and if I did not respond to them with a "yes sir" or "no maam", there would be hell to pay! Using sir or maam was seen as a sign of courtesy and respect, something my country is sorely lacking today.

As for high school graduation, the ceremony is meant as a celebration for finishing school and as a "rite of passage" from childhood to adulthood. It is usually (and hopefully in my case) the time when children leave home to go off to university or to work and start their own life. Recently, elementary schools (grades 1 to 5) and middle schools (grades 6 through 8) have held "graduation" ceremonies to make the kids feel all warm and fuzzy. I think that's a load of crap.

Jack, if you go up one set of stairs to get to the first floor, where are you if you go down one set of stairs?

Pat, it's amazing to me that "root" is considered vulgar but calling someone a "d***head" is not! We were surprised to hear that term on Aussie television, along with many others that wouldn't be allowed in the U.S. American media allows incredibly violent images to be seen but if someone utters the F word, everyone gets offended and the station is fined by the government. Australia and much of the rest of the world seem to be more restrictive on the violence, but as for language, anything goes.

Hollywood confuses me too, it certainly doesn't represent life in rural America. Listening to someone from the deep south or New York can sound pretty strange to a Farmer from western Colorado.

I had a boss a few years ago that was a Kiwi, My wife told him his English was improving after a couple of years here!

We all sound a bit different to other people.

Vive la Differance

BeanMan

You go up one flight of stairs to the first floor from the ground floor.

I remember an Aussie friend getting really offended when I jokingly said something about 'pigging out' I also remember that even the Aussies and the Brits had a hard time with the concept of 'having tea' which meant different things to each of them.

Oh, and never, ever, ever say that The Man From Snowy River is an Austrailian cowboy movie. It is (;-)), but they don't think so!

Speaking of American vocabulary, I remember years ago when I installed 'Wordperfect' you could choose between two English languages: English and British English. I thought that was rather amusing - like the British use some quaint version of English that's not quite the real English that Americans use.

As an interseting point, I was watching an old episode of the Simpsons last night, the one where Lisa wins the spelling bee, and I'm sure that I heard Bart say to Principal Skinner that the first day of school is meant to be a wank and then Pincipal Skinner says something like "If you mean wanking as in full of educational rewards then yes it's going to be a wank" (or something like that anyway).

Now, I don't know what that means in the US, but given the attitudes towards 'cussing' on US TV, it couldn't possibly be the same thing as it does in the UK and in Australia if I heard correctly.

Actually, I just found the exact quote at this address: http://www.lardlad.com/assets/quotes...spelling.shtml and I heard right!

Bart: Come on, man, everyone knows the first day of school is a total wank.
Seymour: Well, if by "wank" you mean educational fun, then stand back it's wanking time!

Can anyone comment on this apparent lapse in the usually prudish American censorship?

Rapunzll, I can't understand why an Australian would be offended if accused of "pigging out". Jeez, we pig out all the time. And I'm happy to have "The Man from Snowy River" described as a cowboy movie, even if we do call them drovers. It wasn't a very good flick anyway.

John, I understand what you're saying, and my good wife has reminded me that in contrast with my own furtive departure from high school (here today, gone tomorrow, as it were, and bloody good riddance according to several of my teachers) our own offspring did have a graduation night, albeit minus caps and gowns. Then they went off to get pissed, if memory serves.

My youngest daughter spent a couple of weeks at a San Diego HS and reported that, although most aspects were familiar, she'd been startled if not horrified to be taken to no less than TWO sporting events, exactly two more than she'd managed in four years at her Canberra secondary college. She further reported that her "preppy" classmates seemed unfamiliar with her preferred clothing style, modified Goth, leading to some vigorous but amiable style disputes. Despite (or because of) a steady diet of "Beverly Hills 90210", the importance of sporting contests in US schools was something she hadn't anticipated.

BTW, another piece of Americana that's unknown here (unless someone's been holding out on me) is the college fraternity.

I too, was astonished that anyone could take umbrage at the expression "pigging out". And if I remember correctly the 80's "Man from Snowy River" was a fairly dreadful movie starring Kirk Douglas - if Australians have any allegiance to the story it would be based on Banjo Patterson's ballad of the same name. Patterson also penned the words to "Waltzing Matilda" which at one stage threatened to be Australia's national anthem. I think he did a far better job on "The Man from Snowy River". "Cowboys" wouldn't be used in Australia much, usually "stockmen" or "drovers".

Guykb's comment about American English and British English struck home. I once had a job in Saudi Arabia where my main job function was to "edit" (read "rewrite") reports written by Saudis, whose second language was English. They were taught English by the British so they spelled (or is it spelt?) and used words as they'd been taught. You know, litre instead of liter, "the team were" instead of "the team was", etc.

There I was, an American trying to decide which English I was supposed to use. My American boss didn't seem to understand the subtle differences between the two and the Saudis were completely confused as to how there could possibly be two forms of the same language. It was an odd situation to say the least.

BTW - My favorite Aussie expression is #@$% me drunk. It just has a certain ring to it!

Ah Melnq8, but the thing is, it wasn't a choice between 'American English' and 'British English'. I was asked to choose between 'English' and 'British English'. As for 'Australian English', well, we don't get a look in!

I think that most if not all English-speaking pedants would prefer "the team was", on the grounds that "team" is a singular noun - but in reality either is acceptable.

Which reminds me of a grammarian whose last words were reputed to be "I am going to - or I am about to - die. Either usage is acceptable."

One interesting Americanism is that "I could care less" means exactly the same thing as "I couldn't care less". I've also been intrigued to see some differences in verb forms - for instance an American "dove" into the pool, an Australian (or Brit) "dived". An Australian "spat" on the ground (past tense) while an American "spit". Some American usages are actually old English usages that remained current in the US but became obsolete in the UK - such as "fall" for autumn.

"Right on" Neil, and then there is the use of the word 'gotten' which is old English and is only or was only used in the US until TV addicts had 'gotten' hold of it. Now I hear it used every day.
I think that a lot of Australianisms are just lazyness really. Each and every day I say to myself that if "that b....y TV reporter says 'pitcher' for picture one more time I will write to the Channel. Another irritating thing too is the use of ' different to ' how on earth can you be different to something - when it should be different from. We all make mistakes but once upon a time it was not done by anyone hired by the ABC. Now they can say whatever they like or look like something that came out of a "Jack in the Box" box or is that the SBS?
Getting back to Graduating from High School though, I have to say that anything is better than the "rights of passage" which is common in Australia and is inflicted on the Gold Coast and elsewhere each year by the name of 'Schoolies'. If the parents of these children saw what went on they may have a different opinion of their little darlings but I just wonder what kind of people they are to let their children run amock like that - give me some sort of gentle, feel good, graduation any day.
My husband who is a "to and from" reckons that we Aussies are English lazy with our 'on ya' g'day, awyagoinawrite, etc but it is more a mark of the era than anything else. Next year we may find that the usage of French is in and the use of Americanisms is out.

I agree with LizF that poor English is more laziness than anything, and I'm referring to ALL English speaking countries (although there's something endearing about footy, breaky, and Chrissy, especially when said with a lovely Aussie accent!)

I also get annoyed when someone says pitcher, instead of picture, or libarry instead of library - especially those who supposedly know better (newscasters for instance).

It drives me batty when someone says "acrossed" instead of "across" or when one of my fellow Yanks sputters something like "them boys" or "I shoulda ran", or uses the word "ain't", which contrary to popular belief, IS in most American dictionaries (sad but true).

Don't even get me started on Ebonics.

As my California friends used to say, "gag me with a spoon".

Guykb -

I see your point. Looks like they left out the Kiwis and Canadians as well.

I must say though that I found the Southern "y'all" endearing, especially when addressed to just me ... e.g. by a kid in Charleston who was flummoxed by my accent and asked "Whay'all fum? Y'all sound lahk a Yankee - y'all fum Up No'th?" But even nicely spoken old ladies of the old school used it, I noticed.

Speaking of laziness, there's an English TV series entitled "Dalziel and Pascoe" in which everyone pronounces "Dalziel" as "deal". Come on - if that isn't sloppiness I don't know what is. Likewise the absurd name Featherstonehaugh, which usually comes out as "Fanshaw" (and who could blame them?). The English are by no means innocent.

How many other languages lay so many traps for the unwary? Once you've mastered Italian or Spanish pronunciation, which doesn't take long, 98% of the time you only have to look at a word's spelling to know how it's pronounced, with no doubt. Conversely, if you hear it pronounced clearly you should know how it's spelled.

Careful Neil - I hear a few Scots bristling already - Dalziel pronunciation is scottish - they are very funny with their zeds - like Mingus for Menzies. There's also a town over there spelt Milngavie (or something like that) and pronounced 'mulgai' Over here - tell someone from Bathurst that they live in Bath-hurst and they will quickly tell you that they actually live in Bathist.

Even in Australia we have regional accents. For example when we moved to Victoria from Sydney we had to get used to people talking about castles instead of carstles like we say in NSW. Also, we say Cicardas but down here it's cicaydas. There's also a suburn of Melbourne that they insist on calling Resevor instead of Reservoir.

Ya'll have made my otherwise miserable day quite entertaining. Thanks (cheers, ta) for making me smile.

This may be a Queensland thing but many of the people we met there greeted us with "Gudday, ow ya's goin?" We didn't hear the plural "ya's" or "yous" anywhere else in Australia. In NSW, the "r" seemed to be more prevalent (as in "tor-let")

The American South has a language of it's own but there are subdialects within it. Neil was spot on with his description of a greeting in South Carolina but in Texas, it's completely different. Two Texans greeting each other, spoken very slowly...

"Howw yew?" (long pause)
"Eye's fine, (pause) howw yew?" (even longer pause)
"Well...ahs fine too!"

Talk about lazy language!

Something that drives me crazy (here in Florida) is when someone says, "I wanna axe you a quession." Huh?? My wife works for a large telecom, dealing with other large companies and there are women in her same position that speak to their customers this way!

"Zed" threw me for a loop when I first heard it. We were looking for a place in Sydney near the ANZ building and I was looking for a sign that said "A & Zed." That was pretty embarrassing!

Well, I have to admit when my Wife and I were in Queensland last winter we were quite buffaloed by some of the phrases we heard. what's that mean?

BeanMan

My boyfriend's father asked me to bring him a special pair of thongs. It always takes me a second to realize he means "flip flops" and not women's skimpy underwear!!

I don't know mina - I think he might have been quite impressed if you'd brought him a g-string.

I would have been quite impressed if he was impressed.

He would like to try these special thongs because apparently, the rubber thongs he wears chafe.

:-O

Melnq8, your mention of Aussies saying something like the "team were" vs "team was" is interesting to me. I didn't know that, but I DID notice that my boyfriend does that. I just thought it was a strange lapse in grammar.

It's come up again, because right now at work, I am going over an educational manual written by an Australian. Our company is global, so we have all kinds of English speaking folks write our stuff. I keeping noticing that he writes "[company] have provided" instead of "has provided". It's kind of confusing to me, but amusing too since I started reading this thread.

John, I should have mentioned that my young friend in Charleston seemed to have taken a handful of uppers, which might have made his speech more rapid than otherwise. I guess that was all that was left to him, as his girlfriend seemed to have swallowed all the downers. I met him at the bus depot - we were only going as far as Savannah, and the bad news for you is that they stayed on the bus, heading for (guess where).

I don't know if this matches your Texas example, but I can't help recycyling an example of how North Queenslanders use "ay" (from "Mango Country" by John van Tiggelen):
'Ay mate.'
'Ay.'
'Sod ay.'
'Ay?'
'Said soddiday ay.' [I said 'it's hot today, isn't it?']
'Reckon. Binodder but ay.'
'Yeah, See ya later ay.'
'Ay mate.'

"Youse" used to be pretty common, possibly imported from Ireland. Something else you mightn't hear elsewhere is the letter "h" being pronounced as "haitch". Many people believe this is a sure-fire indication of a Catholic school education, the theory being that the nuns and brothers, some of them not too well educated themselves, had the job of schooling a lot of poor Irish Catholic kids who routinely dropped their aitches. To correct this they were forced to emphatically aspirate their "h" words, the alternative being regular assault by a variety of blunt instruments, and even "aitch" itself didn't escape.

crazymina, it's not all of us - I say "the company was".

guykb, I'll watch for flying haggises. I agree that there are some regional variations, although a visitor would have trouble picking up most of them. South Australians of course say "dahnce" and "brahnch", and also tend to pronounce "school" to rhyme with "pull". Not sure about this, but I think I've also noticed a tendency for Victorians (and maybe Western Australians?) to say something like "hee-ah" for "hear".

I'm probably too late- this thread seems to be lagging but-
The question of "The team (company) was or were... It depends on whether you wish to emphasise solidarity (The team was) or the fact that we are talking about a collection of individuals (The team were). It's a subtle difference which can be very important to a committee.
The Americanism that I can't get used to is that they say "fit" instead of "fitted."

sange41 - no proof to hand, but I wouldn't be surprised if some "Americanisms" like "fit" vs. "fitted" (and "dove" vs. "dived", and "spit" vs. "spat") might be hangovers from earlier English usage.

Melnq8, re "ain't" - I recently watched a TV production of "Tom Brown's Schooldays", and noticed the decidedly upper-class inmates of Rugby School in the 19th century freely using it.

Neil -

Interesting about "ain't". I was raised thinking that only uneducated country bumpkins used the word, although as an adult I know that "ain't" always the case.

I recently finished re-reading the Grapes of Wrath, which sort of reinforced the country bumpkin theory for me.

Sange41 -

We Americans find the British and Aussie usage of the word fitted about as strange as you find our usage of the word fit.

A British friend of mine always says "shoal of fish", which IS in the American dictionary, but I've never heard an American say anything other than "school of fish".

I also find the Brit pronouncation of words like aluminum (al-loo-men-e-um), oregano (or-a-ganno) and renaissance (ray-nay-sance)amusing.

Then there's things like "my friend is in hospital" - where we would say "my friend is in the hospital" and "the menopause" - where would we would just say "menopause".

Well, it's been fun, but I'm off to NZ for three weeks to further hone my English.

OK so here are some for you Americans to justify and also those Australians who also have started to change the language.
PEDOPHILE (PAEDOPHILE) - if you use the origin of the word and break it down into how it was formed then the original paedophile would make sense in that paed ( meaning child ) and phile ( meaning lover of) meant that a paedophile was a lover of children. Using the now 'in use' spelling of Pedophile with ( ped meaning foot ) and Phile meaning 'lover of' then are we to assume that a Pedophile is a lover of feet?
Same goes for the oft used word of Homophobic - Homo means Man and phobic is 'fear of' ergo being homophobic must refer to someone who is in fear of man or men.
It is one thing to simplify a language or its spelling to be more phonetic ( meaning sounds ) but when it changes the entire meaning of a word then I cannot see why it is done because if you are not going to abide by the rules of our language then you should start changing the spelling of say Phoenix to Feenix because Phoenix has its roots in old Greek/latin/French.
If the above is the case then the whole of biology, science and chemistry would have to change and then instead of understanding a word because of its roots we can get in a bigger pickle than we are already with the language.
I wonder if the changes of late are to do with the fact that Latin and Greek roots don't seem to be taught anymore.

I take a more relaxed view than Liz. English is a flexible and constantly changing language. We can't read Chaucer as easily as modern Italians can read Dante, and we can't read Old English at all.

The Americans haven't done anything more to the language than the British have been doing to it for centuries - rather less, in fact. As recently as the 1940s an English newspaper was pouring scorn on Americans for using the neologism "seafood", for heavens' sake.

Spelling conventions are no more than that, although I agree that wholesale spelling reform would tend to obscure the origins of many words. Worrying about "pedophile", though, is too pedantic for me. In fact I'm seriously thinking about adopting the American spelling "maneuver" because the French spelling is a pain. That might sound like heresy to Anglophiles, but the English have done their fair share of Angicising French words, haven't they.

Americans have hung onto spellings (such as the -ize ending) which the English have changed, so I expect Liz to give the Poms a serve too.

Australians have shared some terms with Americans for a long term - like kerosene rather than paraffin, and the way we apply the word "creek", which doesn't denote quite the same thing in England.

There never has been a time when English reached some mythical state of perfection, never to be altered. Arguably the golden age of the language was Elizabethan times, but that was the very time when spelling and grammar were in a state of flux and a virtual "anything goes" approach ruled.

The important point (IMHO) is that since then, British and American English have separately developed in somewhat (but not greatly) different directions. The language Australians inherited from the British about 200 years later was NOT the same language that the early American colonists inherited. So - "our" language? Whose would that be?

Just because you are an Irish, or is it a Scotish heretic Neil does not give you the right to alter the meaning of words.
Having spent two years in North America I now am never sure of any spelling so using an ize or ise is in fact acceptable according to the boffins within the dictionary world and is, ok, according to me because there never was a "rule" when it came to those suffixes.
I most certainly agree that the English language is a changing one and one only has to listen to BBC World, for the short time that you can stand it, to know that according to the Poms a book is a booo-ook together with some other bastardations of the language. No, my main whinge is the changing of the meaning of words by altering the spelling. I went off with one young relative one weekend with a list of Greek and Latin roots and he was amazed just how many words he could understand when he knew the roots of them. In fact, or at least going further than that, the idea of using Latin and Greek roots when adopting words used in Biology, Science and Chemistry was that it was an International language and because at the time everyone knew the roots of these words they would immediately know what family a particular plant came from or what sort of germ something was but its spelling. So we are in fact moving away from an International language and understanding to a more complicated one built on mere whim to change the spelling of a word.
Who faid that I could not underfand Chaucerian English?

melnq8

just a quick note - we don't pronounce aluminum as al-loo-men-e-um, we pronounce aluminium as al-loo-men-e-um. Note the extra i in the spelling! Just as well you're off to en zud for a few weeks - they'll fix up your spelling AND your pronunciation.

Another thing - what's with "water faucet" - it's a tap for goodness sakes.