How to speak PROPER Australian...

[lewisnotmiller]

G'day...so, there are a couple of ways you can learn to speak Australian without actually BEING one of God's chosen. The first is to listen to ridiculous Hollywood accents (Meryl, I'm looking at you), and then try to make your freaky, foreign tongue mangle English to the point you figure it MUST be Australian.

The second is to pick up Aussie slang from informative sites claiming to be experts in Aussie slang. This will happily give you the impression that a common Aussie greeting is something like this...

'G'day cobber, crikey it's a warm one...How's thing?'

'I'm flat out like a lizard drinking, old mate...'

etc

This is actually mucho crapola. Some of those sayings might have been used when my Grandfather first moved here, but now, not so much. So, in order to educate the heathens (ie. you) I thought I'd throw together some Australian language lessons that are actually USEFUL.

At the end of this, if you listen carefully, you might be able to pass for a normal person, and not a dirty foreigner.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Lesson One : The Greeting

Couple of options here. Despite popular belief, it is quite okay to say 'Hello'. This is probably a word you are familar with. 'Good morning' is also adequate, as long as it is actually morning (otherwise you look like a tosser) and if you don't mind coming across a little up yourself. Still, if it's a semi-formal sorta occasion, you can go with Good morning.

Of course, what you all WANT to do, it seems, is to say 'G'day'. I say 'G'day' a lot, but there are plenty of Aussies who manage to get through life without it. But, for those of you wanting to sound a little old school, this is clearly the greeting of choice.

So...the basics...

Think of it as two separate words. The apostophe is Australian for 'whatever used to be here is a waste of effort', so don't make any 'oo', or 'u' type sounds. From our point of view G' is no longer an abbreviation of 'Good'. It is, quite simply, the 7th letter of the alphabet as a three year old would say it. G.

Day you all know, of course. It should rhyme with 'hay' if you are saying it properly.

G

Day

Say them as two separate words, then say them close together, really quick. No sound in the middle, remember.

G'day.

Not Gooday.

Hence endeth lesson 1. I'll show you how to use your new found greeting in a sentence in lesson 2. Just practice not sounding like Meryl Streep in the meantime. This is always sound advice.

 

[dgirl1986]

Don't forget words like servo, traino and nicknames like shazza, bazza and gazza.

Danny Bhoy does it really well. And the pronouciation of ****** being fark lol

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Lesson Two : The Greeting in context

All right. So you're all experts in saying G'day now. At least, those of you who have sent me cash/cheque/money order for your 'I passed Lesson One' certificates are...ahem...

Using G'day in a sentence is trickier. Here are you main options...

1) Old School Male Rural :
In this type of Aussie language use, less is more. So, the most appropriate greeting form is as follows;

'G'day.'

Now insert at least a ten minute silence where you either drink your beer, chew on a hay sheath, smoke a cigarette, etc.
If you want to increase the warmth of this greeting, a single nod is permissable.
If this is the first meeting, it is appropriate to shake hands briefly, and with a grip that shows you're fully capable of crushing a city boy's hands.

2) Common Aussie :
Best known of the Aussie greetings, 'G'day' is immediately followed by 'mate'. This is actually commonly used, and if said correctly, won't make you look like a Lonely Planet Australian.

3) Common Aussie (variant) :
Less commonly, mate can be replaced with other colloquial terms of endearment. 'Knackers' is a common example of this. 'Champion', 'Chieftain' or even 'Big fella' are also used, although it's poor form to do this if someone else is using the same slang, as you might be trying to steal their trademarked greeting. Find your own variant.

4) Common Aussie (when greeting a female) :
It all gets a bit trickier when greeting the females of the species. Assuming you're not trying to score, a simple g'day might be safest. If she's sufficiently old school, you can go with 'love' on the end. Increasingly, though, the best bet is to actually use the girl's name. This shows (1) You are sufficiently modern to have remembered her name and (2) Avoids the risk of offending some girls, who aren't mad about being called 'love' by some ****** they just met.

So endeth Lesson Two. Next up will be...let's see. Let's go to the other end of the conversation. The farewell.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Lesson Three : The Farewell

Starting a conversation is a useful skill. But, let's face it, being able to END a conversation is even more important. That nice young man you decided to strike up a conversation with turns out to be a complete ******, a potential serial killer, or even worse, an English backpacker. You simply HAVE to be able to clearly signal that you're buggering off (ie. leaving). Here are some common dialect-organised options for you.

1) Old School Male Rural :
It is actually possible to give a half-nod, and just leave. However, it is important to note that this only works with OTHER old school rural males, and seems to be best applied when wearing an akubra. Please note, anyone who hasn't lived in the outback (and this includes city Aussies) might as well turn on the 'I am a ******' neon lights if they try wearing an akubra. There is a particular skill to wearing one correctly, and it seems more related to how many sheep you've crotched than any particular fashion tips.

If you are speaking old rural Aussie male in the company of non-old rural Aussie males (ie. wankers) you are best to launch into the more eloquent, long-winded version.

'See ya'

2) Common Aussie :
Again, 'See ya' is appropriate in a one on one setting. It indicates you still see the person as an acquaintance, or that you can't be bothered with the rest of the sentence.
'See ya mate' is a warmer version of this, and indicates you might see them as a friend...or at least, you won't assume they're gay if they buy you a drink.
If saying good-bye to an entire group, there are a couple of typical Aussie ways to manage this.

The most common one is to say 'See ya later' in a louder voice, coinciding with a wave to the general group.
If you are trying to learn the Western suburbs variant (Melbourne and Sydney), this is amended to 'See youse all later', and the wave can be substituted for a thumbs up. If you are particularly close to these people (ie. share needles) you can extend the farewell to 'See youse all later, ya ******* wankers...', which shows to everyone how close you are (since they didn't glass you in response).

3: Common Aussie (when inebriated)

Australian males in particular tend to drink in shouts. That is, if a group of 4 males is drinking, each takes it in turns to buy four drinks. The result of this is that to make things 'fair' there is peer pressure to (a) all drink the same (b) leave after a multiple of 4 drinks. So, 4, 8, 12, 16, etc.

This has led to many confusing scenarios in the past where men in particular have felt compelled to drink beer when they don't like it, and to stick around for a few more rounds when secretly worried that their missus will castrate them when they get home, and that gee, their guts feel rotten, and wouldn't a souvlaki go down well right about now?

This has led to the Australian male farewell of 'Phantoming'. In this farewell, rather than saying good-bye, you instead say something like 'I'm going for a ****'. You then get out of the pub, jump in a cab, and either bugger off home for a root, go to the local kebab van, have a spew in the gutter, or combine all three.

Whilst frowned upon, it is commonly accepted that everyone has to do this once in a while. Do it too often, and they'll make you take first shout all the time, and question your masculinity.

Next lesson will be some common Australian terms, and their overseas equivalences.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Lesson Four : Our First Guest Speaker!!

So, this is where the basics end, and I start teaching you more about Aussie language structure. If you have had any difficulty with the first three lessons, you should revisit them, as it only gets harder from here on out.

As already mentioned, some sites will try to teach you a prescriptive list of Aussie slang. This is useless. Aussie slang is constantly moving, although there are a few standards (ie. mate).

It is far better to learn how Aussies invent slang as they go. This was extensively studied in the following scientific review;
(Please note, there is some 'bad' language. Also, this is frigging hilarious.)

[youtube]Z0oOluUWczE[/youtube]
Arj Barker - Melbourne Comedy Festival Gala 2010 - YouTube

 

[Secret Chief]

G'day big fella.

I'd like to know how to commiserate with an Aussie please, as it would seem to come in useful quite a lot. For instance how might one express things like 'Oh dear you seem to have lost a rugby Test series' or 'It must be contagious, now you've been beaten in a cricket match too.'

Any suggestions more than welcome (although I note with not a little trepidation the word 'wankers' is not picked up by the forum redactor).

 

[dgirl1986]

G'day big fella.

I'd like to know how to commiserate with an Aussie please, as it would seem to come in useful quite a lot. For instance how might one express things like 'Oh dear you seem to have lost a rugby Test series' or 'It must be contagious, now you've been beaten in a cricket match too.'

Any suggestions more than welcome.

I think the appropriate way to say that is "HAHA YOU F**KING LOSER!!!!"

 

[lewisnotmiller]

G'day big fella.

I'd like to know how to commiserate with an Aussie please, as it would seem to come in useful quite a lot. For instance how might one express things like 'Oh dear you seem to have lost a rugby Test series' or 'It must be contagious, now you've been beaten in a cricket match too.'

Any suggestions more than welcome.

Whilst I can see the hidden sarcasm in your question, I'm going to answer it honestly, since you have clearly been listening to my lessons, and have initiated the conversation perfectly.

First off, any words like 'commiserate' are completely outside the Australian vocabulary. We only commiserate with people we figure are soft, both mentally, and (most likely) physically. It is highly-insulting to an Aussie to offer any sort of platitudes of this sort.

There are ways you can achieve your desired result;

1) Walk up to said Aussie, and shake your head sadly. Then go with something like 'Fark...what happened in the cricket?'

They will respond in kind, shaking their head sadly, and with a muttered 'Farked if I know, mate...'

At this point, they have opened the door to you. You are now permitted to get stuck in to them...or give them ****, in local terms. However, the commericial transaction that goes with this is that you have to buy them a beer.

so...

2) 'Woulda been tough to watch for ya...whatya drinking?'

3) 'Yeah, it was ****...whatever, mate.'

Purchase the beverage, making sure it's of THEIR preference. Despite them saying 'whatever', if you bought them something rubbish, like pisswarm English swill, there will be a fight. Slide the beverage in front of them, and the transaction is complete. You are now fully entitled to take the **** out of them for the duration of the drink.

Please note, there is some academic conjecture that Aussies are going to have to learn to drink even faster to limit the amount of bagging they're about to get from Poms, given recent sporting events.

Hope this helps!!

 

[Assad91]

Isn't speaking like an Aussie the same as speaking like a Brit?

 

[Secret Chief]

Isn't speaking like an Aussie the same as speaking like a Brit?

I see redactor melt-down.

 

[Secret Chief]

Hope this helps!!

Cheers, well sound.

Would you say speaking Aussie is rather like Yank, but without their love of nuanced decorum?

 

[dgirl1986]

I dunno...do brits say stuff like...

Pushing sh** uphill
Like a dead dingos donga
Like a stale bottle of p***
Traino
Servo
Bottle-o
etc

 

[Secret Chief]

Only to my mother.

I think we need an English - Australian Dictionary...

See youse all later, ya big wankers.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Isn't speaking like an Aussie the same as speaking like a Brit?

It's okay, mate. Just take a seat. I'll get you a glass of water. I think you've been in the sun too long. While you're sipping on the water, I'll try and help you. To be honest, I think you'll need to sign up for the advanced course (3 easy payments of $99.99) but I like to help people, so I'll do what I can.

First, some quick definitions.

Brits = Lotsa people, tiny country, pasty skin, crap weather.
Aussies = Few people, HUGE country, golden skin, bloody hot.

Obviously these are generalizations, but even a Tasmanian has a better tan, better taste in beer, and better looking women that your average Brit. The only problem with the women is that they're related to most of em.

Now, in all seriousness, both countries speak English. And some Aussie slang has it's roots in English slang. We do the rhyming slang thing, although it's a fast dying art, and probably marks you as someone's Grandpa, to tell the truth. Can't remember the last time I heard anyone with street cred talk about a 'dog and bone' (erm...phone)

Anyways, our isolation geographically from the rest of the world has allowed us to perfect the English language. Largely we do this by shortening lotsa words that seem overly long, sticking 'o' on the end of them to show clearly that we've shortened them, and figuring grammatical rules are things that wankers use to show their superiority over real people (ie. non-wankers)

I'll give a quick example.

IN England, you have your everyday petrol station. This is a place people go to put petrol in their cars. Seems like a pretty good use of language, right? Score one for England?

In Australia, we call them service stations. This is because they once used to have people who would assist you, thus providing service. They no longer do. This makes our use of the term 'service station' seem pretty antiquated, right? Still got England in front here, in the old 'English language usage' chart, right?

Wrong.

We still call them service stations (technically) because this allows us to drop most of the letters, and call them a servo. Five letters. That, my friend, is Aussie efficiency. If we changed to petrol station, they'd become petroo, which is blatantly ridiculous.

Besides, bothering to change a word for accuracy goes against another key Australian language principal. Supreme grammatical apathy. Anyways, this is all part of the advanced course. Need the money before I give you more than a taster.

Just remember.

English accuracy (petrol station) is a sign of wearing your jocks too tight. Aussies not only don't wear their jocks too tight, but they probably don't put them on at all. If they do, they certainly won't be clean.

So, we get servo. Five letters, and wankers have no idea what you're talking about. Perfection. And all achieved without giving a rat's tossbag.

 

[dgirl1986]

Bloody oath

 

[InformedIgnorance]

A note on the use of the G'Day expression:

Be careful to ensure that if you use this phrase within a few city blocks of any locales known to be haunts of homosexuals such as gay bars, in such a case this phrase should be omitted to avoid rather uncomfortable discussions with people looking to clarify if you were giving a greeting, an invitation or a denigration.

Has happened to me before... I said "gday" to some guy and he was like "what did you say to me?" and he and his friends started looking at me wierd. I sort of started at em blankly not understanding what the problem was before he started repeating "gday? gDay gDay? good day?" and then I was like... "ah... well yeah... gday".

 

[lewisnotmiller]

A note on the use of the G'Day expression:

Be careful to ensure that if you use this phrase within a few city blocks of any locales known to be haunts of homosexuals such as gay bars, in such a case this phrase should be omitted to avoid rather uncomfortable discussions with people looking to clarify if you were giving a greeting, an invitation or a denigration.

Has happened to me before... I said "gday" to some guy and he was like "what did you say to me?" and he and his friends started looking at me wierd. I sort of started at em blankly not understanding what the problem was before he started repeating "gday? gDay gDay? good day?" and then I was like... "ah... well yeah... gday".

Ah yes. This is where Aussie stereotypes have to give way for actual grounded facts. This is the whole rationale behind my crash sourse in Australian, and this gives me a prime case study.

Firstly, the fake Aussie metaphor. In many 'sites' you sill see case studies like this;

'I was walking past a bar, and there was a bunch of guys out the front. Being a typical Aussie bloke, I said 'G'day...'
One of them stood up and confronted me. 'What did you say to me?' 'I said, g'day, mate. You know...g'day!'
'You didn't call me gay?'
'Well...no. To be honest, you don't look that happy to me. Tell you what, I'll buy ya a beer. Bring ya mates to. Looks like there's a bar, just up this alley...'

This story ends in much frivolity, and the new gay friends go on to rescue their clueless Aussie mate from a bunch of redneck biker drug-dealers later in the story.

This is, to put it bluntly, a pile of old pants.

1) Australians understand that there are homosexual folk in the world. They even understand that gay is more commonly used to describe said folks, rather than a state of happiness.

2) Some Australians are in fact gay. This seems to fly in the face of our stereotypes, unless you are educated about Sydney Mardi Gras. If not, don't beat yourself up. We have whole political parties, and right-wing radio jocks still coming to terms with the fact.

3) Whilst gay can mean happy, not all gay people ARE happy. In some cases, this is due to years of prejudice they have suffered. IN some cases, it's because they've had a crap day at work. In other cases, it's because they are wankers. You can't actually tell until you get to know them.

In any case, this is where it all comes down to effective use of language. When walking past a gay bar, if there is any risk at all of some of the gay (homosexual) people being less than gay (happy), discretion is the better part of valour.

Here are my easy steps to not offending unhappy gay people needlessly.

1) Omit all usage of the term 'big fella' or 'knackers'. These are prone to being misconstrued, and lead to excessive emotion (It's a bit of a crap shoot as to exactly WHAT emotion will be excessive...)
2) Use the word 'Hello'. It is less likely to be confused for a sexist slur.
3) If you are compelled to say 'G'day', follow it up with 'mate, how ya doin'?', in a very non-commital tone, without slowing. This provides context that the unhappy gay person might be able to use to work out you are not, in fact, the cause of their current unhappiness.

Hopefully this illustrates the point of difference between the sort of crap advice and language usage you are taught at free sites, and the very real benefits subscribing to my premium service will provide.

 

[freethinker44]

Lesson One : The Greeting

Couple of options here. Despite popular belief, it is quite okay to say 'Hello'. This is probably a word you are familar with. 'Good morning' is also adequate, as long as it is actually morning (otherwise you look like a tosser) and if you don't mind coming across a little up yourself. Still, if it's a semi-formal sorta occasion, you can go with Good morning.

Of course, what you all WANT to do, it seems, is to say 'G'day'. I say 'G'day' a lot, but there are plenty of Aussies who manage to get through life without it. But, for those of you wanting to sound a little old school, this is clearly the greeting of choice.

So...the basics...

Think of it as two separate words. The apostophe is Australian for 'whatever used to be here is a waste of effort', so don't make any 'oo', or 'u' type sounds. From our point of view G' is no longer an abbreviation of 'Good'. It is, quite simply, the 7th letter of the alphabet as a three year old would say it. G.

Day you all know, of course. It should rhyme with 'hay' if you are saying it properly.

G

Day

Say them as two separate words, then say them close together, really quick. No sound in the middle, remember.

G'day.

Not Gooday.

Hence endeth lesson 1. I'll show you how to use your new found greeting in a sentence in lesson 2. Just practice not sounding like Meryl Streep in the meantime. This is always sound advice.

The right way...

[youtube]Y0Rjn6W9jYk[/youtube]
Good Day - YouTube

 

[ElizabethGould]

Isn't speaking like an Aussie the same as speaking like a Brit?

Which bit of England? There's a wide variety of dialects even on this little bit of rock.



Australia is awesome though. I want them to win the Ashes.