A kindly English teacher gave me a copy of “Strine” when I was young – presumably to get me to sit down and/or shut up, as many of my teachers found it pleasing to do. I had completely forgotten about it, until the other day, when it just popped back into my head. In the true spirit of Word du Jour, I thought I’d waste no time in sharing it with you. The book was first published in the mid sixties in Sydney and sadly, I don’t recall ever having seen a copy of it since my youth. Now, thanks to the wonders of the interweb, I found a copy reproduced here.
Not so much a Word du Jour as a national lexicon, Strine refers to the vocabulary and usage of the Australian language. Anyone who has been in conversation with an Australian will know they not only have a wonderful vocabulary all their own, but a very distinctive way of speaking in which the words appear to flow into one another and in which several vowels, consonants or both are omitted. This is where Strine comes in – it’s an abbreviation, of course, of “Australian”. Snippets of everyday conversation have been transcribed by the author – one Afferbeck Lauder – with examples of usage but frustratingly with no translations for those of us who speak the other English. Examples? You bet:
Baked necks: Breakfast. Also popular at breakfast are emma necks and fright shops.
Cheque Etcher: To obtain something. “Where cheque etcher hat?”
Dingo: The negative response to the question “Jeggoda?”. “Jeggoda the footy?” “Nah, dingo. Sorten TV”.
Egg Nisher: A device for cooling a room.
Gloria Soame: A superb dwelling.
Harps: Thirty minutes past the hour. “Harps five”. Also used are fipes, temps and corpse.
I marfter: I’m about to leave. “I marfter tan now”.
Jareedna; Wairtsed: Two words exclusively used for the dissemination of news. “Jareedna paper wairtsed abat the bushfires?”
Laidan: A short nap.
Marmon Dead: Parents.
Sag Rapes: Anything which one wants but is unable to reach.
Tan Cancel: The elected local government authority.
Zarf Trawl: Because after all. “Zarf trawl wee rony flesh and blood wennit Saul boiled
down”.
I love this stuff. I would say that it helps if you imagine saying these phrases in an Australian accent, but those who know me personally have long since realized that I’d never pass for an Aussie if my life depended on it.
Now updated for “Prue and Trude”:
http://www.kathandkim.com/threw.htm
Sorry Autolycus, your post got sent to my spam queue – even though it knows you. I will be giving it a stern talking to later.
Thanks for the update. I will enjoy reading that at the weekend.
The Australian accent is supposed to have developed out of the cockney intonation, due to the first settlers being convicts shipped from Newgate Prison in sarf London. Although the way Strine is written, it looks more like a new aboriginal dialect. The Aussies also have some wonderfully graphic expressions, such as “He was all over the place like an old lady’s breakfast”.
I quite like “shoot through like a Bondi tram” (considering that Bondi is at the bottom of a rather steep hill, I wonder if a tram ever overshot its destination).
I’d heard that – it doesn’t take long for a dialect or branch of a language to appear, does it? Stay tuned for more Australianisms, this time somewhat more “official”. I hope to have the first part up in the next couple of days.
This is funny but complete garbage. I’ve been to Australia many, many times and so I say this is funny but complete garbage.
Australians are different people, some are very funny, I had a great time over there but this kind of stuff is like Crocodile Dundee. Pop.