Job on their hands to learn our Aussie slang

SENATOR PAULINE Hanson went on a public rant saying Melbourne residents trapped inside nine housing commission towers were drug addicts and should have learnt English before coming to Australia.

She added, an inability to speak English led to the towers being shut down.

Geez that’s a bit rough, I thought. Then I got to thinking about learning another language and felt a tad sorry for the tower residents because it is damned hard based on my own, failed, attempts to learn to converse with my two French grandsons.

Mrs J and I signed up for lessons at “Alliance Francaise” and were well and truly out of our league.

I recall listening to a beautiful, former, African woman relating her own experiences as she addressed a group of new arrivals at City Hall.

She said, “We all try so hard to learn English before we arrive and when we get here we find you don’t speak English at all.

“I greet someone by saying how are you today? And they respond, good and yourself.”

I thought it was terribly funny and cleverly delivered.

It is true we don’t speak the perfect English, and that’s what I love about the place.

I fervently hope the hundreds of thousands of new arrivals will adopt our Aussie interpretation of the mother tongue.

There’s a bit to learn though and you could start with a few gems like fair dinkum, blokes, sheilas, drongo, arvo, snags, barbie, gidday, strewth, bottler, ripsnorter, crikey and bonza.

Trouble is that none of these words bear any resemblance to the words they represent.

Then there’s the phrases, oh the phrases.

Let’s look at food references for example.

“Fair suck of the sauce bottle” (you’re pushing me too far), “a few sandwiches short of a picnic” (questioning one’s capability), “dog’s breakfast” (mess), “wrap your laughing gear around that” (time to eat), “I am so hungry I could eat a horse and chase the jockey” (really hungry) and “sportsman’s lucky dip” and “maggot bag” (pies).

Then there’s the character references like “have a Captain Cook” (look), “Buckley’s chance” (he was a convict escapee who was found 30 years later) and “leaving the porch light on for Harold Holt” (waiting for rain or for a Broncos victory).

Others include “kick up the backside” (make someone work harder), “six of one and half a dozen of the other” (stating the obvious), “wouldn’t piddle on them if they were on fire” (not necessarily a friend) and “hit the frog and toad” (time to leave).

Our new arrivals have a job on their hands but, as they’ve shown before, they’re up to the task, much more than me and my French fluency ambitions.

Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi!