I have returned to
the Island from my annual sojourn to my homeland and I already feel
overwhelmed.
For a couple of
weeks I did not utter even a single ‘can’ or a ‘cannot’ nor any form of
Singlish.
I slipped easily
and comfortably into my normal spoken dialect.
“Gidday”
“Owitgoin”
“Strewth”
“Nowuckinfuries”
“Sweet”
“Bewdy”
I am however not
as Strine as I once was.
The word Strine
means to speak in a broad Australian accent.
A journalist for
the Sydney Morning Herald named Alistor Ardoch Morrisson coined the term “Strine”
in 1964. Morrisson wrote humorous columns for the newspaper and he enjoyed
taking the piss out of the Australian accent.
His readers
enjoyed it too.
Self deprecation
is something we Australians do very well.
The word 'Strine'
is not recognized by my now English-English word auto spell check function on
my now-not-so-new Mac Air Book.
I worked out how
to change it from the default setting of American-English - which was an
abomination.
The auto spell
check function on my now-not-so-new Mac Air Book most annoyingly keeps changing
the word "Strine" to "strike".
Shit.
It just did it
again.
Morrison also
wrote a song that he recorded in an exaggerated Australian accent. It was
called "With Air Chew" ("Without you").
It was a colonial love
song.
Morrison's book,
"Let's talk Strine" was where the word Strine first appeared
in print.
Strine is of
course the word "Australian" - being said in Strine.
Good and proper
Strine is spoken through the mouth and nose - at the same time.
It is no easy task
for non-Australians.
Many of the
languages of the native and indigenous people of Australia have been lost. The
aboriginal tribes of Australia who are the traditional landowners of our nation
have been scattered and their numbers are greatly diminished.
However the Strine
dialect is alive and well and the very large Bogan population of Australia
speaks it.
The Bogans are a
white Australian tribe and they are mostly the ancestors of English convicts.
They are not
indigenous.
I have written
about the Bogans before – and at great length, so I will not repeat myself
here.
If I speak too
Strine in many Asian countries - where I now live and work - some people cannot
understand me. So over the years I have modified my accent.
I am occasionally
both horrified and appalled though when some people ask from which part of
England I am from. This is enquired of me on a fairly regular basis and it
happened twice today.
Here in Singapore.
I generally
correct such occurrences immediately and I advise the enquirer quite firmly
that I am not English. I politely inform them too that it is quite an insult
for most Australians to be mistaken as being English.
We don't like it.
It was two Indian
gentlemen who enquired from where in England I came from. When I informed them
that I was in no way one of the English they actually seemed quite pleased to
hear that I wasn't from the United Kingdom.
They didn't say as
much - however I suspect that like me - and indeed most of my brethren, they
also do not hold the English in very high regard.
I don't blame
them.
Who would?
India was one of
the countries that the British invaded and occupied way back when they were
once a global power.
They referred to
themselves then as the "British Empire".
This was a long
time ago.
The Indians kicked
them out of the sub-continent more than one hundred and fifty years back.
They overwhelmed
them by sheer weight of numbers.
It is only
marginally less bad for we Australians to be mistaken by our accents as Kiwis.
However this also
happens on occasion and we don't like that either.
The New Zealanders
also do Strine they however have a significant problem with the vocalisation of
some vowels.
They simply can't
pronounce them.
For example a New
Zealander would say "fush" instead of "fish" and
"chups" instead of "chips".
Listening to New
Zealanders converse in such a way and for any length of time is painful and
annoying.
It is acoustically
offensive and it is often intolerable.
It is this
distinctive vowel impairment that differentiates them from we Australians.
I tend to speak
Strine more frequently and quite easily when I am in the company of my
countrymen and women at expatriate gatherings that I occasionally attend here on
the Island.
I attend these
gathering at places that are named the Boomerang Bar or the Platypus Kitchen.
Yes I am serious.
These are real
names.
Yes I know.
I know.
We all speak
Strine when we gather at such places.
Perhaps it is the
names of these establishments and being amongst our kinfolk that compels
us.
I just slip into
it.
"Owzitfukingoin
mate?”
When conversing
and communicating with the Bogans in Melbourne and Sydney - when I was back
home - I speak Strine out of necessity. Many people would not understand me
otherwise – or they would assume that I am English.
The current
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is of Bogan stock and he speaks bold and
fluent nasal Strine.
Like most
politicians he is also a dick – although Strine has little to do with this.
Many Strine words
are just made up.
"Fair
Dinkum", "Strewth" "Yobbo" and "Ridgy-Didge"
are some examples.
Few non-Strine
speakers would know the meaning of some of our Strine words.
There is
"Woopwoop' for example and "Tucker" and "Hooroo" and
“Dunny”.
For those who may
be interested in knowing, "Woopwoop' is a place in the middle of nowhere.
"Tucker"
is food" and a “Dunny” is a toilet.
“Hooroo"
means goodbye.
“Hooroo"
means goodbye.
No comments :
Post a Comment