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Way with words

by Kathy Vincent | 10 Sep 2016

For a foreigner, Aussie slang can certainly be a funny thing to understand. Here, Kathy Vincent from Pumicestone Passage Probus Club shares a hilarious account of what life was like for her when she first migrated from England.

 

Retirement – now where will my life lead?

I’ll move to a sunnier coun-tree

Italy, France, Spain perhaps

Just where will my life take me?

Now at school I was fairly clever,

But at languages poor every day

So Europe is no good for re-housing

I won’t understand what they say.

So Australia I decided was just right

We all speak the same, I’m sure

There won’t be a language problem

The English language is so pure.

I arrived in this country excited

The sun, the sky, the sea.

I’ll soon communicate with the locals

Oh how wrong can you be?

I thought I would just grab a coffee

Now what’s so difficult about that?

Then they offered me things I’d never heard of:

“Would you like flat white or long black?’’

I just wanted well – a coffee

I’d no idea what to choose

So after standing there looking stupid,

I said ‘’I’ll just have an orange juice!’’

Walking through the hotel on my first day

Someone said, “My, those thongs are neat’’

Well, in the UK you wear them somewhere else,

But here they’re worn on your feet.

Take lollies, well, I call them ‘sweeties’,

For me a lolly comes on a stick,

You don’t enjoy them one by one

But lick after lick after lick.

There are bad people, who break into houses,

In the UK, a crook is his name,

But here it can be anyone

Who’s feeling poorly or sick or lame.

‘Billabong’ sounds like a bell ring,

And ‘tinny’ is a sound that is hollow,

And ‘stubby’ means short and stocky

But here it’s all beer, now that’s hard to swallow.

So many words end with the ‘o’ sound

Like ‘smoko’ — now what can that be?

It doesn’t just mean having a cigarette

It could just mean a cup of tea.

How can something like ‘Salvation Army’

Be altered and changed to Salvo’s?

And afternoon is no longer ‘afternoon’

‘Cause afternoons are ‘arvos’.

I’m trying to learn the language

I’m not doing too well up til now

But I’ve always welcomed a challenge

And I’ll learn it all somehow.

I’m as much use as a dingo in a chook pen,

When it comes to this language, I’m thinking,

But I can’t do much about it,

I’m flat out like a lizard drinking.

But I love it in Bribie Probus

I’ve made lots of good friends it’s true,

I’m starting to learn the language

But I need lots of help from you!

Kathy is now in the running to win the annual Paul Henningham Award for Literary Excellence. Want to enter? EMAIL: [email protected]. POST: Smile, Active Retirees, 369a Darling Street, Balmain, NSW, 2041.