Tuesday 31 July 2007

Strine

I'm reading A Town Like Alice at the moment, and lordy the language is from another time (or possibly just another place since I guess it's really the language of the outback that features). Scarcely a sentence involving the Australian character (Joe) goes by in which he doesn't say boongs, Abos, Nips, cobber, bonza, chunda, dinky-die, tucker or any other ludicrously Ocker expression you care to think of.
UPDATE: And his affectionate nickname for her is Mrs Boong! And he also says "fair cow" a lot, which seems to be a generic term for anything that is bad/slow/a long way away (eg. "You can't get chaps to come and work in the outback. It's a fair cow").

9 comments:

Nick Jensen said...

Gotta love the australian language...
I think it's really charming actually. A bit baby-ish at times, but who am I to judge?

rswb said...

Baby-ish? How do you mean? With all the abbreviations of things (arvo, telly etc)?

Nick Jensen said...

Din-dins...
- need I say more?

rswb said...

But people only really say that if they either are being childish or are trying to be annoying or if they actually are children, though, I think. Although I just asked Reto about that and he seems to think I say it a lot. Which, considering what I said just a sentence ago, seems pretty mean of him. Bastard.

Nick Jensen said...

I recall Kim saying din-dins frequently, or typing it when chatting. But it might just be my bad memory. It WAS however, and with no doubt her who put that word in my head...

rswb said...

Well, you shouldn't imagine that stuff Kim does/says can be considered normal!

Nick Jensen said...

I thought as much...

Kim/moolric said...

hey!

rswb said...

You can't deny it.