Australian language?

Posted by: Nefertari

25th Nov 2010 06:07pm

My husband was watching an English television program the other day when one of the guests on the show commented on how a lot of other countries take English as their own language whereas only people from England should have English as their main language.

I was quite indignant at this at first but then I thought ...hey, she's right... we should have our own language! In my opinion our language though based on English should be called Australian.

What do others think?

mysteron347

18th Aug 2011 02:20am

What a load of dingo's kidneys!

Fact is that regional dialects in England can be next to incompehensible in another county. Expressions change region-to-region.

George Bernard Shaw was right in 'Pygmalion' (My Fair Lady) - it is quite possible for the attuned ear to distinguish between people who live even a few streets apart (or at least it was until forty years or so ago - TV and radio have smoothed over many variations.)

So what precisely is this narrow definition of "English?" London English? Yorkshire English? Lancashire? We'd be fighting the wars of the roses over again.

Australian English is a different and as similar as any of these other regional differences. Australians have polony sandwiches and cartons of beer. Yet some inhabitants of the overgrown cow-paddocks East of the line of chaos would insist on 'Fritz' or 'Devon' and 'slabs.' Do we classify each of these odd variants too as 'Australian?'

Then there's expressions and mispronunciations that are peculiar to members of one's family or even one's own household. Do we have to have a special name for each individual variant? If not, then how much difference need there be between "languages" to make the distinction necessary?

Frankly, I reckon the entire idea is cuckoo.

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