Language is the greatest hall of identity that a country can have, the other is anthem. In the case of Australia, the official language is English, however it is a somewhat peculiar English. Its differences with respect to the English of England and the United States leads to consider it as an Englishman that is not 100% from England.
The language of Australia and its peculiarities
A different who is spoken in England and United States , so much that the Irish playwright and journalist George Bernard Shaw , winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, he reached affirm that the language that the Australians spoke did not sound exactly the same as English . Others went beyond Shaw’s light statement regarding the English of the Australians and defined it as «the most horrendous English in the world.» Peculiar, horrendous, be it the English one spoken in Australia is different from the English of the English, and that is that in the country of kangaroos, some words are pronounced very differently from the pronunciation of England.
In the English Australian , some long vowels in the so -called standard English , in Australia are brief < /Strong>, or vice versa; And regarding the consonants , these are duplicate , such as bassic , instead of basic .
In addition, the vocabulary has included of 2,000 a 3,000 terms that Australians have coined in the development of their history ; Terms that some Strong> Languages which were spoken by the first inhabitants of the country, the aborigines .
For the Australians, for example the word Waddy , whose literal meaning in English is that of Cachiporra, in Australia it has the meaning of cane; monkey is the ram, and not mono as in English; aussie is the Australian, and Naussie -new aussie- is the immigrant; Dinkum means true or authentic, hence the expression Dinkum Aussie, an authentic Australian.
The English spoken by the Australians
On the English in the spoken language by the Australians there is a very frequent use of affective pleonastic expressions that by the future of the passage of time they have gone losing its original meaning. Pleonastic or pleonasm is the rhetorical figure that consists in using one or more words that are unnecessary for a concrete expression in a phrase, but that give it greater expressiveness and reinforcement.
For example, in Australia, the word Bloody , which etymologically means blood An affective meaning, and that means bastard, in Australia it is used as an expression of affection, thus a friend becomes something as shocking in principle as «my dear bastard», or «my good bastard.» To express something that is wrong, which is considered unfair, or that is wrong, the expression poor cow is used, which means poor cow; This expression is also used if you want to mention a rainy day, or also of someone who has sold us one thing for another.
Language is part of the culture of a country, it is its identity seal, as is its geography, cities, and traditions. If you want to know all these aspects of Australia and receive the best information, visit these links:
In this promotional video, images of Australia are seen, a country in which its official language is English, but a somewhat peculiar English: