yes sparaxis,

it makes us unique hey and always interesting yes that bit about plants that you said i always gotta stop myself short form responding just to simply say "put them on the driveway and drive over them with the car a few times is one way almost guaranteed to do IT hey" lol

they love chooks don't they hey, just about everytime i use the word it needs qualifying.

len

Many years ago when I was newly arrived in Oz from the Uk I won a prize in the weekly office raffle. A chook Sue - you've won a chook they said. Great hilarity when I had to ask what is a chook and what do I do with it.

I wonder how many new chums like me many years ago, when told to 'bring a plate' for supper took along an empty one??

Thought they were short of crockery so took half a dozen - one for each of us:)

Cathy

lol cathy,

i was borne and bred here in aus' and moved to rocky and the work social club had a bbq thingy and asked all to bring a plate now as i had never been into this social scene much before i took a plate oh and also a knife and fork to be sure lol.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

did you read the book or see the Movie of Nino Cullotta's book " They're a Weird Mob " with the Italian migrant and all his problems learning about Australians, one of the funniest Movies I have seen.

It must be one of the hardest things about learning English when you are faced with the way Australians use it.

I know Australian is a hard language to learn but many years ago when I was in high school we were taught French by a French-Canadian so we all spoke French with a Canadian accent :)

Ashmeri,
I loved that movie. Where's the bloody beer?

yes i thought "they're a weird mob" was a good real life comedy sort of movie pretty much covered how it was, hey migrants getting on with the locals as best they could, yes in real life there was the odd spat here and there in the burbs, but by and large all those new aussies turned into old aussie just like us and enriched our culture and eating habits.

can't realy say that it happens that way now and looks much like we are modifying our culture to suit the johnny come latelies. anyhow that's a whole nutha' story, bring back the good old days.

len

Some Canadian friends of ours do find Australians hard to understand because we slur our words and our pronunciation is not clear. A good example is "avagooodweekend or owareya.

The other point they made is even the French would have trouble understanding French Canadian. Apparently French Canadian is 16th Century French. Their language has been isolated from the changes in true French so it is old fashioned and also has other American and European mixed with it. Hmmmmmm

Point to Ponder:

If Phonetic spelling is such a good thing to make spelling easy then why don't they spell Phonetic with an "F"?
But then we are talking English.

Doug.

No wonder I had so much trouble with French! :)

One of the few places I have any interest to visit is Canada, I think it is a beautiful country.

My canadian uncle was rather perplexed when I suggested chook and chips for tea.He was still not sure when I suggested he wander down the back to see if the chooks had laid any eggs.With eggs as the clue he took chooks to mean chickens.I knew what i meant.
He referred to my ute as a truck and my truck as a tractor trailer .Had a neighbor of mine in stitches as he asked where the drugstore was and she also loved his use of the word bathroom instead of toilet.
I just loved the canadian irish accent he has .
The handy thing is i have an interpreter on tap for when I get to canada.

Hubby had the most difficult time getting a cup of white tea last year, when he was in the US. He ended up asking for balck tea and a small jug of milk!
Another day he asked for something "to take away". I would have thought anyone would understand that, but Nooooo. Fortunately he thought to translate it into americanese as "to go" as we have all seen them say in movies. They understood that!

We call them cats dogs and birds, they call them fur babies and feather babies! takes a bit of getting used to.
I keep getting images of little babies in fur coats!

"When an American gardener explained that he liked to pot his irises up until they were 'thoroughly rooted', before putting them in the garden, It was all i could do to stop myself replying "that is the stage when we put them on the compost here in Aus"."

Does "thoroughly rooted" mean dead or dying?

well I would have translated it that way in the aus sense of the word, coarse as it may be. I have seen plants in K-mart that could be described that way. They usually pop the price down a little bit then :-)
I am sure in the US it could only mean the plant had established a lot of lovely roots, and was ready to go in the garden.

"I am sure in the US it could only mean the plant had established a lot of lovely roots, and was ready to go in the garden."

Yup, that's it. We take that expression literally!

Ah - Springa - I just realised you are from the US :-) The expression in Aus is very crude and I won't give you a translation here.