Steph is in Singapore and using Singlish like a pro! (It’s easy, cos it’s like Manglish only a bit more different) Because most of our readers are Aussies, and if there’s one thing Aussies love it’s slang, she’s compiled a list of important words she knows/has been learning to use in Singapore.
Category: linguistics
Elementary Malay, prepared as a guide for R.A.A.F. personnel
Elementary Malay, prepared as a guide for R.A.A.F. personnel, issued for the information and guidance of all concerned
By Command of the Air Board
August 1944
Because Steph’s moving to Singapore next week, and I bet you didn’t know she collects vintage language guides.
[Liz: how did I not know this? It’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard.]
Continue reading “Elementary Malay, prepared as a guide for R.A.A.F. personnel”
very lolstralian things steph said or heard at the footy on the weekend
We’re not saying she said them, but we’re not not-saying she said them
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Liz leaves the house: West Writers Our Stories Forum
The West Writers Our Stories Forum was first held in 2014, and continued this weekend just past. It’s held out in Footscray, in Melbourne’s mid-West, yay! (Very brown territory) Its concept is examining “what story means to a wide range of communities and how we can represent the diversity of stories and voices in Australia’s literary scene.”
[Liz attended on her own, because Steph had a prior engagement.]
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on being a bilingual child
Steph was sort of raised in a multilingual household. Kind of. Sort of. Anyway it’s very complicated, and she has feelings about this beautifully written but very misleading post at The Toast: Exposure: On Raising a Bilingual Child.
A Pub With No Beer: Australian slang that foreigners* misuse
There are many very important articles floating around about vital Australian slang, such as this listicle at buzzfeed and this listicle at huffpo and and this other huffpo listicle. And they are very critical to any understanding of Australia!
In fact, why don’t you watch this video for 2 minutes before we start this post. No Award and the Friends of No Award have watched this several times and cried with laughter every time.
Okay, good, great work, everyone.
This post was mostly inspired by Mad Max fandom. What Steph loves the very most about Mad Max fandom is that it’s full of grumpy Australians being really grumpy about non-Australians (mostly Americans) Getting Things Wrong. Steph is one of these Australians, all get off my lawn and get out of my car, and definitely get out of my town of 2 million people that doesn’t have a Starbucks. She’s a little bit obsessed with an epic coffee shop AU set in a small town in Australia. It has a Starbucks and a piano bar but no pub. NO PUB. Not gonna link the AU because it’s not about making fun of fanfic, it’s about making fun of Americans in general, and revelling in our own ridiculousness.
And so, for the humour and wtf of all Australians, we present:
A Pub With No Beer: Australian slang that foreigners* misuse
Continue reading “A Pub With No Beer: Australian slang that foreigners* misuse”
Linkspam with you in the comfort of a lounge room in suburbia
The Vine counts down ways women ruin everything. With bonus puppies!
Peta Credlin has become a lightning-rod for discontent driven by fear
We at No Award are quite intrigued by the fact that, when Julia Gillard was an unpopular prime minister with a tough, unpopular male chief of staff, she was demonised, whereas Tony Abbott is an unpopular prime minister with a tough, unpopular female chief of staff … once again the woman is demonised.
[Disclaimer: If the current Australian government was the subject of a satirical ABC comedy in the style of The Thick of It — and how we wish that were true — Peta Credlin would be Liz’s problematic fave. She’s not quite Malcolm Tucker in a skirt, but only because she’s not famous for creative swearing.]
Skills shortage for Auslan interpreters
Melbourne Nylex clock turns on, makes mysterious return to life
Nylex Clock/Skipping Girl Sign OTP, y/y?
A Meat Processing Professional Reviews Snowpiercer
Paying to Work: The Perth Film Network and The Action Film Plan
The Perth Film Network’s latest venture, called “The Action Film Project,” is what appears to be either a particularly exploitative form of crowd-funding, or an unethical business scheme masquerading as a golden opportunity for aspiring filmmakers.
Satire and Scandal: Revisiting Frontline
Interesting long reads
Cicada: Solving the Web’s Deepest Mystery
Or, an episode of Elementary and an amazing premise for a YA novel in one! Link nicked from Natalie Luhrs of Pretty Terrible, but shared here again because it is AMAZING.
Can the Next Generation of Morticians Breathe Life Into the Death Industry?
Welcome to a Liquid Modern Queensland & Why Tony Fitzgerald’s in Despair
A dense but rewarding discussion of corruption and neo-liberalism in Liz’s home state of Queensland.
And if it’s not region-locked for you, Liz totally recommends Chris Marsters’ The Moonlight State, the 1987 Four Corners expose that helped bring down the Bjelke-Petersen government. It has some gratuitous strip club footage, but is brilliant and valuable nonetheless.
Things said incorrectly by Sydneysiders (A list).
There is a great divide across Australia. It causes minor squabbles and major fisticuffs. The fights have been extensively documented, as has the divide. And no where is this great division more more obvious than in the differences, linguistically, between Sydney and Melbourne.
Although often Melbunnies are incorrect, I can tell you with great certainty, being from Perth (the most distant capital city in the world), that Sydneysiders are incorrect like 99% of the time. The bridge goes to their heads (and at least our Arts Centre looks like an actual building instead of a deformed bird).
The rest of you: Pick a side, losers.
Things said incorrectly by Sydneysiders (A list) (AKA the great Aussie linguistic divide)
Juice boxes (also known, in this instance, correctly, as poppers).
Potato cakes (Melbourne, Perth) vs Potato scallop (Sydney) vs the completely incomprehensible Potato fritter (SA). (I really now want a deep fried potato slice)
Water fountain, incorrectly known as the bubbler (or the bubblr).
Queenslanders call suitcases ports, and they’re wrong.
Other things Queenslanders do: the eternal but. Versus the eternal Victorian tho.
Bathers; also known as swimmers and togs. I’ve heard cossie in Sydney so clearly it’s wrong (and also the name of a movie featuring Barry Otto (Miranda Otto’s dad), Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths, and David Wenham, so obviously it can’t be a thing you wear in the water).
But Melbunnies are painfully tragic, and so there are some ways in which they’re imperfect. The following refusals to let go of their inferior and long distant past are prime examples:
The insistence on using ‘Safeway’ when the rest of the country has been Woolworths for eleven trillion years. Let go.
Southern Cross has been so named since 2005. Let go.
Say these words out loud: castle; dance. If it sounds like you’re saying ‘cattle’ and ‘farce’ then you’re totally wrong.
Zooper doopers. ZOOPER DOOPERS. NEITHER OF THOSE ARE REAL WORDS. They’re goddamn funny faces. (Liz disagrees; they’ve got a cool space theme and she’s gonna fight Steph to the death. But at least we can all agree that they’re superior to Sunny Boys (incidentally not called sunny boys in Perth – thanks to Amber for reminding me they’re called FREEZAS))
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