Thankyou for pasting this for me pr_capone .. yeah, it's turned out rough as guts .. i'll try and edit the squiggles out of the bastard
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Australia is the home to the oldest living culture on Earth. Aboriginal Australians speak many languages and most now speak English. Most Older Australians speak their own brand of the language, developed during our years of isolation from other English speaking peoples.
We don't speak it like Englishmen or Scotsmen or Welshmen or Irishmen or Americans or South Africans or Indians or Pakistanis or Filipinos or even New Zulundmun or any one else you can think of who speaks or claims to speak English.
When I first posted on the net a lot of folk hardly understood a word I said. Fair enough I found out a lot of other English speaking people have difficulty understanding plain Australian, so I toned it down.
This to most Australians though this is an astonishing thing. After all, our language is uniform. We have no dialects a foreigner could detect. With few variations in idiom and tempo, our language is the same from Dubbo to Kalgoorlie. Australians have very little trouble nderstanding others though, no matter what brand of English you speak.
So, as the famous Australian professor said “why is this so? Why do so many foreigners have trouble understanding our simple and pure
English? Buggered if I know mate but I’ve taken it upon myself to try and enlighten you folk with a weekly lesson in my mother tongue (you lucky punters!)
(first person to say I've got too much time on my hands gets a boot up the date)
OK, let's start.
Just settle back ya bludgers, let me do all the talk'n and we'll get out of this with our adjectives integrated and our vowels shot through like a road sign west of the divide.
: Any younger Australians tempted to cringe and call me names shut up and ya might learn something! <-- A Farkel type pre-emptive strike as the yanks would say (or is this a vertical insertion?)
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Australian for Beginners. Week 1.
I think I'll start with my favourites - the "b" words as mother would say.
Bastard:
This is an extremely useful noun, as valuable to Australians as the mobile phone to the jet set. You may have been told that it's a term of endearment Well that isn't entirely true*
Sure, male friends still greet each other with phrases like "hello ya ol' bastard, what're ya drink'n?" or "Where ya been, ya ol'
bastard?" The prefix "ol'" denotes respect and this privilege is strictly reserved for friends. Any stranger who walks into a pub and calls an aussie a bastard better have reinforcements.
You may though refer to yourself as being a "bit of a bastard" and the definition will be accepted.
If you hear of a third person, in his absence being referred to as "a bastard", the word will not be a term of endearment.
There is a vast difference between "friendly bastards" and "mongrel bastards" and there are many kinds of bastards in between.
There's the fellow who's not a bad bastard and one who's a "harmless bastard" and one who's "a stupid bastard" (not to
be confused with a "silly bugger") all of whom are "not bad bastards when you get to know 'em" But the bloke referred to as "that
bastard" is indeed a proper bastard to be avoided if at all
possible.
And the worse kind of all is the "useless bludging arse'ol bastard" who is fortunately rare and endangered. Useless bludging bastards have no
friends at all.
Until you become familiar with all the shades of meaning given to the word bastard, it's better that you leave it out of your conversation. Otherwise you may acquire a reputation for being a "know-all bastard" (or big headed prick) which means you know nothing at all.
The end.
Homework: Discuss the word bastard among yourselves and become familiar with it's tone. (but don't use it about anybody! except that "piano punch'n bastard" Farkel!
ooroo till next week folks, unclebruce
ps:thanks for posting this from email pr_capone - I owe ya one!
*see week 3 Bullshit