Part of the English speaking world.

I always manage to have a quiet chuckle when I hear a Yank ask someone if they speak English. Why, I wonder? YOU don’t. Now before you go getting all big and tall on me, I’m not claiming to be a paragon of pronunciation. Me, I don’t even LIKE plums. No, I’m a Norstrayan; I speak Strine, and I’m proud of it. Our biggest crime, linguistically speaking – which is... well, you know – is that we tend to make entire conversations into just the one word.
“Gdaymatehowyougointoday?” And for the love of all that’s good don’t you dare either open or move your mouth when you speak. We’re a nation of ventriloquists, we are.

At least Australians can all understand each other. Have you been to Britain? I haven’t but it’s on my to-do list. Just under ‘amputate own toes with rusty pliers’. Anyway, it seems that if you’re from more than two villages over, no-one can comprehend a bloody thing you’re saying. Or such is my understanding, at least. Apart from being cold, wet, and full of Poms, it IS still all villages there, isn’t it?

The septics are the same. Put a guy from Kentucky and another from somewhere clenchy like Vermont in a room together and there’s no chance they’ll get along. Granted they’ve got more barriers than just language – their grandpappies probably sighted each other over muskets once or twice, and it seems the Yanks are worse at getting over stuff than Christopher Reeve’s horse.

But where we compress and slightly mangle our words, and the Poms just lay thicker and thicker accents over their mother tongue, the Ahh-Mayor-Eye-Cans have taken it upon themselves to ruin it completely.

They’ve got form on this sort of thing, too. Let’s start with sport. Ever seen more than about five minutes of their football? I guarantee you haven’t, even if you think otherwise. They’ve taken the game (allegedly) played in heaven – rugby union – and turned it into the most stilted, slowed down, overdone garbage ever seen. Whilst simultaneously turning the players into raging Pooves. They look and act like ballet dancers (masculinity benchmarks that they are) that have never shrugged off the shoulder pad trend. Their scones must be pretty soft, too – helmets are for warriors, boys...

Basketball? That’s just a bastardisation of Netball (a GIRL’s game) with the rules changed around to make it less appealing. You see, what makes Netball bearable – even enjoyable, at times – is the presence of tall hot chicks in shorts skirts running around getting all fired up and sweaty and... Unnnnngh...
Where was I? Right, so basketball does away with all of that. Sure, there’s ladies (using that term loosely) basketball but when there’s already the original game, why bother? And they wear PANTS. Yuck.

NASCAR – Latin for, “You want me turn in WHICH direction?”

Then finally we have the disgrace they’ve made of interpreting cricket. Great game, cricket. Five day tests played in (but not mostly by) whites, nasty hard ball, batsmen who spend hours at the crease building big scores; I could (and do) go on.
Baseball. Utter shite. More poofy pyjama based uniforms. Nuff said.

Warfare, it’s not a really difficult concept. We all learned how to do this in the schoolyard. Pick some kid you don’t like – smaller than you, if you’re smart – crack him one when he’s not looking and then run like buggery. (Let’s face it, if there’s been buggery, there’ll be running. In more ways than one.) If any teachers ask, you were never there. What you don’t do is go around to his house, camp in his lounge room and go him there. He’s probably got older brothers, and his mum will give you SUCH a whipping with the wooden spoon. Are you listening, America?


Yes, the Seppolians like to take something elegantly functional, ruin it, and then hand it back to you with some needless extra bits and the claim that it’s ‘new and improved’. How can it be both, I wonder?

Which brings me to English. It was working fine the way it was, but our Empire-building North Pacific cousins have long established themselves as the supreme exponents of the art of choosing to be wrong simply to be in possession of the opposing point of view. And then chucking a hissy fit when we don’t all agree.

The Americans, they’ll claim, stopped using vowels in their words because they have a burning desire to spell things the way they sound. Phonetically, like. While this argument may seem good in theory, it falls apart under scrutiny. Particularly when you factor in a detail such as a standard of pronunciation that would see the word ‘second’ contain two ‘T’s, an ‘A’ and a ‘K’.

And the changes in meanings, for just no reason whatsoever. Ask for a biscuit in the States, and up North you’ll get blank looks. Down where the cotton done get picked they’ll give you something, but my friends a biscuit it is not. What you need to have been requesting is a ‘cookie’. Why you’d want to chomp down on that companionable chef from the RSL is beyond me, but there you go.

Having some toast, are we. Like some jam to put on that? HAH. Try ‘jelly’. Fear not, you’re not stacking Aeroplane’s lemon-lime on your toast; that’s what they call their conserves. What do they call their jelly, then – why that’s Jell-O. It’s just all messed up. Has anyone ever rung a mate up and asked for help because, “I’m in a bit of a jelly”??? Over here that means that he’s wrestling with bikini-clad dancers in a wading pool, which is no cause for concern unless his wife finds out.

Incorrect usages, that’s a personal fave. ‘Momentarily’ means FOR a moment, NOT IN A MOMENT, you tosser! Often I hear a seppo say, “I’ll be with you momentarily”. I think, ‘Okay, so I’ll need to be brief. Then where are you going?’

Or another classic is the utterance ‘I could care less’. So you care then; to a degree at least. Do you, just by chance, mean that you couldn’t?

Look up the word ‘rout’. A defeated and fleeing army is said to be in ‘rout’. Or, a rout is also a groove cut in your Craftwood. Remember that stuff? Sold to us by that old Pommy actor guy in those clever ads – don’t claim you don’t know. Now say it with me. R-Ow-T. To cut said groove, we use a machine from Black & Decker that’s technically known as a dovetail cutter, but is universally called a ‘router’. Easy enough so far, right?

And then there’s ‘route’. A route, as opposed to your short cut which is a different kettle of fish, is quite simply ‘the way’. Your direction, if you will. Your Tom-Tom points out the route, and I’m told computers use routers for something or other as well.

Here’s where the problem arises. Route is pronounced ROOT, but some jerk probably got embarrassed or something, and decided that we should refer to the dovetail cutter instead. Maybe they were worried about routers being confused with rooters, which might seem fair enough but is really no cause for concern.

You see, all of our rooters are mad, and are automatically noted as such. But that’s not a bad thing. A ‘Mad Rooter’ is a thing of beauty to be cherished and admired – put the Black and Decker away because she already has a groove, and she knows how to use it. Bless her.

The last word on this comes courtesy of our sheep-rooting (not routing) little bros on the other side of the ‘dutch’. Some Kiwi bloke made a beer purely for the Yank market, and in a fit of inspiration called this brew – which incidentally sold quite well - ‘Wanker’. I’m not making this up. He then launched the most brilliant marketing campaign with Tee shirts emblazoned with the prophetic words, “I feel like a Wanker”.

And so you bloody well should. You’ve already buggered up the footy, but if you could just leave our beautiful expressive language alone, you meddling pricks, everything would be just fine.