On - the Aussie and how we speak
Sometimes
you do struggle to understand don't you ...?
"whatthehelldidesay?"
and are
we proud of these our folklore 'stereotypes'?
or are we...just as happy to move on?
"Stone the crows - Barry's taken off for the mother-country". Australian Barry Humphries, well known throughout the world for his Dame Edna character,rarely lays claim to Barry McKenzie these days. Our Bonza Bazza incidentally spawned his (to be Dame) Auntie Edna way back there somewhere... yet Humphries seemingly left him behind. Why would he do that?
'Barry' was the ugly Aussie tourist abroad (Earl's Court London - to be exact). A product of the Humphries' vivid imagination largely founded I guess in impressions from his own father's background as a construction worker.
Bazza spoke in a rich Aussie slang - 'hit the frog and toad', 'rather eat a dog's eye','may your chickens turn into emus and kick your dunny down' and a so on. None of these unique to Humphries, mind you.
Surely fiction to the outsider ...but no, a legacy product of the Aussie at play both "in the bush" which in many ways spawned us all (see Eric Jolliffe) and into the cities. Yes, on construction sites, and in some ways in all working class homes for all us 'Baby Boomers' (as those marketeers like to refer to us these days).
To the point of today's chat - what of gen X & Y's? - what are they losing of our linguistic Ozzie heritage going forward? as these multi-cultural internet users explode on the global scene with a tighter language that has to be more or less correct English. These days,brevity too is 'the go'. And as for using colourful slang based imagery that has flowed through from our forefathers ...well, not advised really...
I have found myself pulled up time and time again in the past decade to explain my slang which I have thrown-in to simply colour a 'yarn'. Thereby in explaining it, often losing the punch of what I was saying.
On speaking of a sportman's poor effort in game last weekend, I said to group of Gen Y's - "he dogged it" - the three looked back at me as though I was speaking another language - I guess I was. A friend only this week mentioned to her 30 yo daughter-in-law re a doctor they know "he's getting a bit long in the tooth". The d-i-l had no idea what she was talking about.
So I guess the colourful language of the 'bushie come to town', we everyday Aussies have learnt to 'hold dear' as we have urbanised ourselves these last hundred years is in truth condemned to the dustbin of history and gone the way of 'button up shoes' (whatever they were?).
Well, from there, I felt a touch of melancholy.
So I turned to the greatest Aussie poet I know, Banjo Paterson, just to get a sense of where his 'Clancy of the Overflow' would be without some expressive 'slang'. And ...much to my surprise despite the hundred years - there is no slang ...only correct English. (One clear abbreviation though... perhaps a sign of things to come)
So what do you make of this lot then?
I wonder whether people will be able to translate 'omg" in a 'hundred years to come' - our 'gen 100+ers'?
As for Barry McKenzie ...I liked his Uncle Les much better anyhow. Or ...maybe not!!!
I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
Just ‘on spec’, addressed as follows, ‘Clancy, of The Overflow’.
And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,
(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)
’Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
‘Clancy’s gone to Queensland droving, and we don’t know where he are.’
In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving ‘down the Cooper’ where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover’s life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.
And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wond’rous glory of the everlasting stars.
I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all
And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the ‘buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.
And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.
And I somehow rather fancy that I’d like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal
But I doubt he'd suit the office our Clancy of the Overflow
- our Andrew 'Banjo' Paterson
17 February 1864 – 5 February 1941
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banjo_Paterson
