Accentuate

I recently met an American woman who, after living here for 12 years, had developed an Australian accent so strong as to render her verbally incognito. While I have altered my pronunciation of a few words – mostly because I got tired of getting sideways glances for saying ‘to-MAY-to sauce’ or “BAY-sil” or “go fuck YOUR self” – I cannot imagine ever losing my native tongue completely. I admit, that having become accustomed to hearing muted vowel sounds, I often cringe when I hear Americans terrorizing ‘a’ and ‘o’, and I always consider it a compliment when people tell me my own accent is soft, which I assume means that I do not abuse words such as ‘like’ and ‘y’know’ and ‘totally’.

I have, however, adopted several colorful turns of speech, mostly because they are fun, but occasionally because they are insipid and have simply infiltrated my personal vernacular without my notice. For example, when someone is teasing me or giving me a hard time I might say “Are you taking a piss on me?” This is great fun because they don’t know if I know what I am talking about and cannot decide if they should explain the difference between ‘taking a piss on someone’ and ‘taking the piss out of someone’. If the situation is becoming emotionally charged, I might excuse myself by saying “I have to go crack a shit” which further confuses them as to whether I am truly getting angry or merely have an irritable colon and no sense of discretion.

Of the insidious linguistic idiosyncrasies that have become a part of my daily banter, my favorite by far is “And…yeah.” This phrase is incredibly useful (and widely employed by broadcasters, politicians, and especially athletes) when one is making a point or relating an amusing anecdote and has simply run out of words. It seems such a natural way to signify the conclusion of a collection of thoughts that I often wonder how I ever managed to let people know when I was done speaking.

The Australian lexicon is renowned for its exotic creativity, and I am often queried about various expressions and terminology. While I am indeed vastly entertained by this subject, I have not made any sort of extensive catalogue of my personal observations, mostly because there are ample internet-based resources already dedicated to such translations. If you want to know more about my individual collection of idioms (such as ‘budgie smuggler’ or ‘chuck a wobbly’ or ‘Pommie bastard’), it would best be done in person. We could sit down over a cold pint, have a nice chat, and…yeah.