Travel with Me, Part 3: Australia
G’day mates!
I am onto the next part of my journey, to the land down under! Australia holds such a special place in my heart; a place that I moved to with 3 of my closest friends, and a country where I found the man of my dreams. ♥ Interested in that story? Go ahead and revisit an old #phrasalverbfriday post, our love story.
I’ll stop with the cheesy sappiness (cheesy= extremely silly, almost in poor taste & sappiness=overly romantic; very exaggerated) and get into what today’s post is all about, some common differences in Australian English and American English. Not only is the accent extremely different, Australia are so crazy they even create their own names for things. 😉 (just kidding about the crazy part). I have already posted an infographic a while back about this topic, but will revisit the post and add some new content to keep things updated!
The first bit of new content, how to sound like an Australian in 3 steps.
- Cut the word in half, and add a “y” to everything: sunglasses- sunnies, breakfast- brekky, flat-mate (roommate)- flatty, barbecue- barbie, football- footy…. do you get the point? I used to live near a neighborhood called Freshwater, but surely a proper noun wouldn’t be cut, right? WRONG. I lived near Freshie.
- When you don’t add a “y”, you add an “O”: afternoon- arvo, devastated- devo, bottle shop- bottle o, agressive- agro
- Never call someone their full name. Cut it! Then add a Z or an O: Jennifer-Jeno, Lauren-Loz/Lozza, James- Jimbo, Barry- Baz, Sharon- Shazza
So my 3 steps may be a bit exaggerated, but it is true that a lot of words are cut and abbreviated in conversations. Check it out….these guys, Josh and Reese, are Australians, and they’ve made a pretty interesting video with a lot more words than mentioned above, plus you’ll get to hear how it actually sounds. Enjoy!
In older news, last year I hosted a vocabulary challenge: Australian VS American English, which challenged followers to try and define the common Australian words. Remember these words differ from American English, so might be something you’ve never heard. I’ve already spilled the beans on some of the vocabulary like arvo and sunnies, but let’s see if you can accurately guess these words:
Check out the answer to the first one here, and the second here.
We’ll end today off strong in vocabulary, with a final visit to last year’s post, Free Friday: American VS Australian Vocabulary Differences The best part of that post though can be seen here…
I’ll be back with more Australia for you as soon as I get settled and say my hellos to everyone. Until then…
Happy Studying! ♥
Don’t forget to share this post to help spread the beauty of language learning, thanks! xo Jennifer