Speaking Our Language: The Story of Australian English - Bruce Moore

[Bern]

The author - Director no less of the Australian National Dictionary Centre - is currently completing the second edition of the Australian National Dictionary. In this book you'll get the latest thinking on how the Australian accent evolved while learning that there's little use in correcting your kids' language - they get it from their peers not their parents.

The book is full of interesting etymologies, starting with kangaroo... "like the animal itself, the word kangaroo is probably the most recognisable Australian on the world stage." Cook and Banks picked up the word at present-day Cooktown from the Guugu Yimidhirr people. The Europeans assumed it to have currency among all indigenous people. This lead to some first contact confusion. The Sydney Iora people thought they were being taught the English word for 'edible animal' and gaangurru entered the Baaganndji language as the name of the introduced animal 'horse.'

Kangaroo is now one of the most productive words in Australian English (kangaroo paw, kangaroos loose in the top paddock, Socceroos) and features in two terms that originated outside Australia (kangaroo court first appears on the Amercian goldfields in 1853 and kangaroo closure is a British parliamentary saying).

Words from indigenous languages are not that numerous, although many of them - like wallaby, bunyip and mulga - have a wide currency. Excluding place names, about 440 words have been borrowed from about 80 languages, including cooee 'a call' (1790), budgerigar (1840), bindi-eye 'a plant with a barbed fruit' (1896), kylie 'boomerang' (1835) and yakka 'strenuous work'. Dating a Kylie could be hard yakka. Didgeridoo is not an Aboriginal word which may disappoint some Euros going bush.

The chapter on Aboriginal Englishes is interesting because that Australian English is not often heard outside of indigenous communities or in the national media. That section concludes with a note on how sorry has a different meaning in standard and Aboriginal English.

Now, review done, I'm off for a dingo's breakfast...