Translating English into English II

The Everyday
I have to confess that I've been a little disappointed by how few people actually say G'day mate. It must be too cliche for cosmopolitan Melbourne (pronounced Melbun). Most people say "how you going?" which sounds a little off to us because its so close to both "how's it going" and "how you doing" but clearly isn't either. Similarly, "good for you" is "good on ya!" here and always said with apparent enthusiasm. Another everyday expression is "no worries," used by almost everybody in place of "no problem" or "you're welcome." I occasionally hear "no dramas" as another substitute, which I quite enjoy, although it leaves me with a vague and erroneous sense that I'm being admonished.

The Edible
I hear some of my favorite Australian English in pubs, where we seem to spend a good deal of time since Lucy likes beer, Jake likes pool and everyone there likes having kids around. The standard 10-oz glass of beer is a "pot" (as opposed to a pint), and when your glass is empty, "the tides gone out." Standard pub food is chips (fries), calamari and "bangers and mash" (sausages and mashed potatoes). Most salads are made of "rocket" which is arugula. A more general term for food is "tucker" and it took us a while to figure out that an "entree" is a starter and not a main course.

The Quaint
A swimsuit is a "bathing costume" which is adorable in its quaintness. People are "keen" to do things they enjoy. And "cute" and "lovely" have suffered from inflation here, and are "gorgeous" and "beautiful." Children especially babies, are gorgeous and food tastes beautiful. I think Lucy is going to suffer a blow to her ego when we return to the U.S. and she is demoted to cute again.

The Pop
I also made an important discovery about the lyrics to Men at Work's "Land Down Under." This is probably obvious to anyone who watches pop-up videos, but I always thought the lyrics were: "We come from a land down under. Where women glow and men plunder." We went to a really great dinner party a couple nights ago with a couple of families from Jake's school and ended the evening watching music videos fom the 80s (my idea of a perfect evening). Anglo-American cultural heremony means Australians in the 80s also made out to Roxie Music, danced to Madonna, partied to Talking Heads, played Kate Bush on road trips, and still know all the lyrics to Graceland. So "Land Down Under" came on, and my kind hosts enlightened me to the fact that men in Oz don't plunder so much as "chunder" (throw up). It makes so much more sense now that I've been here. I haven't checked the lyrics on-line; they may actually do both.

The Code
There is also some residual rhyming slang here in Australia, related to Cockney rhyming slang and brought over by working class Brits. An American friend of ours here, Kevin, also a recent arrival, has a really good website on which he explains rhyming slang. A common phrase (sometimes itself slang) is rhymed with the word you want to communicate, such as "bread and honey" with "money," and then the rhyming word is usually dropped, so that bread itself becomes slang for money. Or "billy lids" (a billy is a metal pot used for boiling water) is rhymed with "kids" and billy becomes slang for kid.

The following comes from Kevin's website:

I sorted this out as I finally figured out why people sometimes referred to me as a septic":

Septic = Americans, who are "yanks" = "septic tank"... or just "septic" in rhyming slang.

Just a few more examples:

Loaf = head, as in "loaf of bread" - so, "look at the loaf on that guy Gary!"

Al Capone = phone - so, "hand me the Al Capone"

Olivers = drunk, as in "pissed" like "Oliver Twist" - so, "last night I was Olivers"

Captains = look, as in Captain Cook, with "ava" a shot version of "have a" - so, "Ava captains at that girl!

So ava captains at these pictures of my outing with Jake and his friend Tyler to Luna park a few days ago. There the normally cautious Jake embraced the rollercoaster with gusto and the three of us had all kinds of stomach-churning fun.