Not cilantro.

It amuses me that Wikipedia’s list of British English words not used in American English is about twenty times longer than the equivalent American English words not used in British English. I wonder if this can be attributed to any sort of cultural sensibility, “Our language must be kept intact” or more the sheer pervasiveness of the US media machine: It seems American TV and film is the world-wide default these days.

Looking at both the lists, Aussie English seems to fit somewhere between the two. We get almost all the older British expressions (busk, dole, skint etc.) but other than on the telly (oh glorious, glorious beeb) a lot of the newer ones aren’t used at all (minger, chav etc.) In regards to septic vocab, we tend to use the American word in a lot of situations where both alternatives are understood (eggplant vs. aubergine, bandaid vs. plaster, sedan vs. saloon) and it seems that US programming is more popular in Oz than in most of Europe and in particular the UK. Perhaps it’s because of this that, in my experience, Aussies are more adept at deciphering the more extreme dialects from both region than a direct cross-Atlantic translation, with some obvious exceptions; a person from Glasgow is going to be complete unintelligible, no matter who they’re talking to.

The folks that really get the short end of the stick are the Kiwis, who speak faster than Aussies, have a thicker accent and have their own unique slang. A sterling example was the girl from Auckland back in first year who had a real pearler of a kiwi accent, one which got exponentially thicker in accordance with the number of beers she’d had (“dunt git yer knuckers in a twust, eh”) and during the course of the year I had three separate people (1 UK, 2 US) confess to me that they didn’t understand a word she was saying.

We’re just as bad though. We had a bunch of new exchange students turn up at school today and with them was a teacher from their school. After a truly painful introduction in enunciating. every. syllable. slowly. Japanese, she switched to super-speed English in an accent so thick she made Steve Irwin look cultivated. She finished, and everyone applauded politely. The English teacher next to me turned and whispered, “she, she was speaking English?”

I suppose. If you want to call it that.

owyergoinmateorright?

Permalink Posted in Rant on Tuesday January 10, 2006.