As I’m sure most people know, English is the primary language spoken in Australia. This has made the adjustment much easier and much less awkward than it might have been in a country without English as the native tongue and saved me from several embarrassing moments. Despite this, I still sometimes have a difficult time understanding people through the accent. Australians tend to speak very fast. That combined with an unfamiliar accent sometimes makes it impossible to understand people. I’ve had to ask for clarification several times, sometimes to the point where I give up trying to understand and just nod my head. Some people understand that they speak too fast and slow down when they realize I’m having difficulty. I’ve learned to just pick up a few key words in a sentence, as one might with a foreign language, enough to understand the general idea of what one is trying to say.
Australians love to shorten words. There is actually a funny YouTube video that was shown several times during different orientation sessions making fun of how Australians shorten words. During my dad’s visit, he picked up the word “brekkie.” Back home, I sometimes said this as a joke, but here they use it was a normal word. In typical dad fashion, my dad loved to say “Brekkie with Becky.” …Get it, because it rhymes? That is just one example of how Australians shorten words. Spaghetti Bolognese becomes spag-bol, afternoon becomes arvo, fortnight means in two weeks from today, the bottle shop (a liquor store) is called the bottle-o, Tasmania is Tassie, and so on.
One of my friends here from Northeastern has picked up a new favourite word. The Australian slang term “bogan” can be thought of as our word for a “red-neck.”
One thing that does throw me off sometimes, especially with schoolwork, is the subtle differences in spelling. If you’ve been following along, a lot of my posts add the extra “u,” as in favour, or use “s” instead of “z,” as in summarise. Microsoft word on my computer was auto-defaulted to Australian English, because I purchased my laptop here, have Monash’s demo of Office, and my computer’s location is set to Australia. When writing papers and reports, I try to be conscious of this, but it often slips my mind. Fortunately I don’t think my professors penalize for this. ☺
