It's a bargain!
Last night at book group, everyone was asking about my trip. Somehow, the conversation evolved into language differences or more specifically, what we determined were quaint Australian uses of the language. Everyone loved the term budgie smugglers (read about them here).And fair dinkum – which translates as true, real or genuine – was also popular. In usage, I might say I caught a fish that was 12 inches long. And your reply would then be: fair dinkum, mate?
I have to say that I have mostly heard the phrase used in the country and the outback, although Robert’s Uncle Brian does live in Sydney and indeed says fair dinkum quite a bit.
I ate my steak and mushroom pie with tomato sauce (ketchup) and a nice cold Tasmanian beer.
Thongs are what we call flip flops in the US and men and women, young and old wear them everywhere. By the way, you certainly don’t want to say that you “root” for a sports team while in Oz or you might be considered promiscuous as “root” is slang for sex.
Moving on from Strine (Australian slang) to uses of the language, if you see a pie shop it’s probably going to be serving meat pies, not dessert pies. We Yanks, of course, would more typically talk of a dessert pie although we do have pot pies which are basically the same thing as a meat pie in Oz.
Outback transportation.
While we were in the Northern Territory, we encountered a lot of road trains or big trucks with many trailers. In the remote parts of Oz, road trains are one of the best ways for getting goods around.
Last, I could not resist sharing this front page headline from the NT News while we were there: “Best man left bleeding after being hit in the head with a flying dildo. And wait till you hear where it came from. Inside full story.” I just don’t see any non-tabloid newspaper in the US running with that headline.
After that opening, the paper ran more typical news. But this ad caught my eye: “Be crocwise” which was for a crocodile capture company. Now that is just something you don’t see advertised in my part of the world.
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Co-incidentally I watched a program on television tonight – I’ve been following for a few weeks about the development of the English language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_English on which they mentioned fair dinkum has English origins. Apparently dinkum was an older English word which came to Australia with European settlement, and which died out in the UK, but lived on in Australia.
That’s great James. Thanks for sharing the origins of dinkum. To my American ears, it is such a fun word.
These are some really fun pics to look at. As we don’t see any signs like this in dublin, it makes it all the more fun to see vicariously via 59 north! Really fun posts from your travels.
m 🙂
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