Macquarie Dictionary
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.
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