Aung Si writes:
…If people from other parts of the world come to live in an English-speaking country like Australia, and they are in a social situation with monolingual, English-speaking Australians (lets call them MESAs for short), the polite thing to do would be to stick exclusively to English, so that everyone gets to participate in the conversation.
April, 2010
On the rudeness of foreigners
Pronouncing Foreign Names in English
William Steed writes: The recent problems encountered by reporters attempting to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull, the name of the Icelandic volcano causing a whole different set of problems, has caused a flurry of guides to pronunciation. On youtube: On Wikipedia: Eyjafjallajökull And a comprehensive post on Language Log, describing the difficulty of Anglicising a difficult and long [...]
READ MOREA quixotic debate
Aidan Wilson writes: Last week, an argument was waged in the Opinion section of the Sydney Morning Herald about the effect of the internet on language. It started with an article on Tuesday about Australian author Cate Kennedy, who fears literature is being threatened by the internet. She’s referring specifically to writers who become addicted [...]
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COMPETITION: The RuddBot Detailed Programmatic Specificity Translator™
It probably comes as no shock to learn that most members of the Crikey crew are total word nerds. We love a good pun, inventing stupid haikus and are fully paid-up members of the Subeditorial Antics Appreciation Society. But our all-time favourite office word game is the “DetailedProgrammaticSpecificityTranslator™” — also known as “RuddSpeak”. Everything is [...]
READ MOREHavin a Barry
Barnaby Greg Dickson writes: Barnaby Joyce, Queensland Senator for the Liberal National Party, has been havin a bit of a Barry of late, getting a bit of a kicking for being a tad too outspoken. But one area in which he beats other pollies hands down is his talent for wedging Australian English right there [...]
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How sick? Fully sick.
Piers Kelly writes: As an Australianism, ‘fully sick’ isn’t exactly the latest news but somehow it still has the power to enthuse and dismay. I first remember hearing it in Melbourne in the mid-1990s and became an instant ironic user. The Macquarie word map has reports of people using it in Melbourne and Sydney only, [...]
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neologistics
Piers Kelly writes: There are at least four ways to respond to any new colloquialism. Perhaps you’ll find yourself amongst the early adopters. These folks typically belong to the same social crowd that originally innovated or borrowed the colloquialism. Then there are the ironic users. They enjoy the expressiveness of the new word or idiom [...]
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