Linguistics

What kind of shape is Australian English in? Is it in top nick, crackerjack, tickety-boo, both beaut and bonza? Or is it showing signs of being cactus, knackered, buggered, stuffed, rooted, possibly even up shit creek, as it succumbs to the continuously rising tide of social media slang, management jargon and Americanisms?

It augurs well for the idiom that anyone who has lived in Orstraya for more than six months would have understood every word in the above three sentences.

But at a time when footy coaches urge their stars to be more accountable, when kids are busy LOL-ing and ROTFLMFAO-ing on Facebook, or declaring on Twitter that the latest Hollywood blockbuster is an “epic fail”, when every seven-year-old girl with a Singstar would rather sound like Miley Cyrus than Missy Higgins, pessimists could be forgiven for thinking that Australian English is in more trouble than the early settlers.

Continue reading "Cactus or crackerjack? The state of Australian English" »

The expulsion of an Israeli diplomat this week took me back more than a quarter of a century, to the expulsion of the Soviet “diplomat” Valery Ivanov in 1983. Ivanov had been fingered as a KGB spy, and he was being thrown out for attempting to influence a senior A.L.P. figure, David Combe.

Surrounded by media at the airport, he gave a brief statement in Russian. As he turned to go, a voice rang out: “Could you say that again in Australian?”

Ivanov didn’t bother – he was gone. But the question stuck with me for one reason: it was the first time (though by no means the last) that I was to hear the language we speak referred to, not as English, nor as “Australian English”, but as “Australian”. 

Continue reading "Ostraya, a lucky winner of the linguistic lottery" »