Sometimes Sayings.

I dont like the Americanizing of Australia at all, America is fine, the UK is fine as is Europe and the rest of the world but I reckon Australia should always be Australia
Our own funny country that laughs at each other and we generally get along pretty well

But Halloween and calling everyone bud or buddy is not on, like fries and chips, beetroot in burgers and pineapple

And that Yanky spelling, tyres go rims not tires, we paint things a certain colour not color, we have Mums not Moms

You get my drift, this is not a rant

Now America and it's ridiculous way of writing dates

today is the 6th of July 2021 in the rest of the world or at least over the next 20 hours it will be, but not the good old U.S. of A it will be July 6 2021

Does my bloody head in, why America? why?

Well I always thought this just a American thing until recently and I was following my other passion, trains and discovered this photo



Well check out how the date is written

Did we once write the date like this in Australia ?
It never really crossed my mind until this thread went a little off track and I have just taken it a bit further

Sorry Brocky no offence meant in any of this or anyone else that I may have upset with this post

Paul

Paul,
Naming the month before the day I can comprehend, when all in numerals of month, day, year it gets a longer look.
David.

I could not read or write in that year so cannot help you out with an answer.

Mrsmac, I’m 75 and beetroot on hamburgers was around when I was a boy. What’s the difference between a beetroot and an egg? You can beat an egg, but you can’t…………………….

wrote:

Mrsmac, I’m 75 and beetroot on hamburgers was around when I was a boy. What’s the difference between a beetroot and an egg? You can beat an egg, but you can’t…………………….

:woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

Yeah beetroot has been around for as long as I have known, my father always would order a "hamburger with a egg" no beetroot or pineapple, I think my taste buds took after my Mums

Paul

Having been a teacher and a print editor (amongst other things) during my life, I lament at the woeful state of things these days. Personal pet hate for me is these ones and those ones, neither of which requires the word ones at all!

The way the date is written is an excellent example of how mixed up the Americans can make things. The older English way of writing the date follows a pattern, from smallest, to larger, to largest, simple. Whereas the American way is jumbled up in the way it starts as one thing, becomes a smaller thing, and then finally moves to the biggest.

We have always been in the middle - maybe the Irish influence on both USA and Australia?

I will see if I can find it, but in an Australian Army workshop manual there is a translation section for parts of a car written about 1942. Three columns USA, Australia, UK. Unsurprisingly, even at that time, the Australian descriptions are a mix of both but far greater American than UK. I think Henry Ford may have influenced us.

The British column has stranglers and dynamos while USA/Australia has chokes and generators etc. Of course there are the mudguard/fender comparisons but, as mentioned, far greater use of American expressions.

Lang

Even within Australia there are State and regional (intrastate PDU?) differences.
Some fifty years ago, I lived in Shitzme for a few weeks. If a person there had hurt themselves they would say it was Paining. I wonder if they still do?
In Mel-boring children are taught to pronounce the letter "H" as HAICH.
In South Australia people still call one type of what others call a Ute, a "Buckboard," a throwback to horse drawn vehicles.
In many areas, potato cakes are called "potato scallops" to differentiate them from real scallops which are a shellfish.

My Grandmother, who died more than forty years ago, used to tell that when she was a child her mother would visit one old lady who ran a greengrocer shop (remember them?) The lady would ask "What'll Ye 'ave, a happle or a horrange?"

I could go on with lots of others but that would only annoy all of you rather than the few I have annoyed above.

State differentiations are getting fewer and fewer with an even more mobile population than we have always had. We certainly have our own universal language. There are very few state-based TV programs and even the big daily radio talk-back programs are heard across the country crushing any state orientation.

Despite some "experts" claiming to be able to tell which state a person comes from by their accent, I totally reject that. All you can take a shot at is their education and maybe rural or urban background from their selection of words and pronunciation. Some words are "in fashion" in different groups or areas which may help identify people as a group but probably not a state.

We had a highly educated lady Prime Minister with the worst Okka accent imaginable while on the Liberal bench you had a pukka speaker brought up only two suburbs away from her in Melbourne. You often see an interview with an Australian farmer who speaks like an Oxford Don (with a light Australian accent) while the bloke next door talks like Chips Rafferty.

We have our own identity and can be identified immediately by English speakers everywhere. The poor old Kiwis are lumped in with us around the world and although Australians can identify a Kiwi within 2 sentences nobody else can. A bit like us being accused of being Poms in France.

Something that drives me insane is the large number of total a...les you run into overseas. Wherever Australians gather you hear crap like "beauty bonza blue" or at the top of their voices "Jeez, I'm dry as a dead dingo's donger" in bars emanating from idiots who never once used or even heard those expressions spoken in real life. A number of times I have responded to a French waiter's question as "yes, I am American/English" while a table full of Chips Raffertys - including women and quite often not young people - make pricks of themselves across the restaurant.

We have a great individual version of English which identifies us mostly positively around the world, there is no need to make our language into a laughing stock caricature just to be recognised as Australian.

Rant over!

Lang

Lang, I had not heard of Aussies being mistaken for Poms in France but I believe that Americans think our accent is English.

Years ago, at a party I met a very educated Aussie who had been with a group tour of France. They had travelled on a train and refused to pay the ticket collector. When he finally brought along an inspector they pushed money into his hand. The storyteller thought it was hilarious. I told him I thought he was an idiot. He did not speak to me again.