Any Australians out there?

Hey I've got these two secondary characters who are twin teen geniuses and I decided it would be cool if they were Australian by birth. They would have come to America at about 14 and been here like 2 years. I figured the should be from Adelaide since Sydney is too obvious. I was wondering what kind of Australian words would they slip into conversation? (Anything: slang, cuss words, terminology ) Also do they get Doctor Who in Australia?

edited 20th Mar '13 9:32:21 AM by HistoryMaker

Australians do have an extremely rich vocabulary - slang that they have in common with us "Kiwis" ("ANZAC slang"), UK and US slang from getting films and television shows from the UK and the USA, and their own Aussie slang.

And I'm pretty sure they get Doctor Who in all civilised nations on the planet. (Don't tell any other kiwis I called Australia a "civilised nation", I'll lose my credibility.)

And several non-civilized ones, like Turkey.

Not Australian but one piece of advice is to not use "shrimp on the barbie". From what I hear, they prefer using "prawn".

Good to know

However the setting is kinda After the End so fresh seafood probably won't be a big thing (unless you can catch it yourself in Rhode Island.)

I mostly need some stuff an Australian teenager would say if he forgot for a second he was surrounded by Americans.

Something to consider is that language being an ever evolving medium, and with your story set in the future, you could probably get away with most anything.

Regardless, found an article on Wikipedia about Australian English. Hope it helps.

thanks :)

It is future but not far future, more like 7 years.

edited 20th Mar '13 4:15:19 PM by HistoryMaker

Well, a common feature of Australian English is that everyone gets a nickname.

That great!

All of my characters have a nickname/code-name.

In the case of the Australian twins I'm calling the boy '"Chaos" and the girl "Pandora".

Pandora actually gives my main character her nickname.

So the last character is gonna be named Raven, right?

No "Ace"

Why would it be Raven?

edited 20th Mar '13 5:24:17 PM by HistoryMaker

Fark oath! You never meet shiela nicknamed Raven!

Yeah, mate. Stone the bloody crows, that sheila was always "ravin'".

There'd be things that wouldn't change in a long while - an insulated box for keeping your beers etc cold is an "esky" (we call 'em "chilly-bins" here) what the English call "flip-flops" or we call "jandals", the Aussies call "thongs" - quite different from what other people mean when they "put their thongs on".

A word of advice: Aussies and Kiwis, due to the large number of TV shows and films we get from USA and UK, are extremely cosmopolitan in our understanding of US and Brit slang. Far more aware of it than US or UK audiences would be of Aussie slang (unless they watch "Neighbours" a lot) or Kiwi slang (unless they've had a lobotomy and decided to watch "Shortland Street")

An American asking an Aussie "who do you root for?" is likely to be understood, despite "rooting" having an entirely different set of meanings in Australia and New Zealand, while that same American may be puzzled by the Australian saying "I'm utterly rooted."

Confusion is likely to be on the parts of non-Australians when dealing with Australian vernacular rather than the Australians failing to understand UK or US speech (unless the Australian concerned has spent the last 60-or-so years locked in a concrete bunker with no outside contact.

edited 20th Mar '13 8:15:43 PM by Wolf1066

I'm an Aussie through and through. Run anything on your mind past me and I'll give you the straight truth.

I'm Australian.

I've been to Adelaide once... it seemed like a small city to me (compared to Brisbane and Melbourne) but I was only there for a few days.

Depending on the social group, yeah, Australian culture is big on nicknames. Particularly ones involving Zs (pronounced 'zed', by the way). If your name is Lauren, somebody will call you Lozza.

Yes, we get Doctor Who.

Chezza and Pando.

It's common in Australia for names to be mutilated in such a fashion... For example, the town of Bassendean is sometimes called Bazzo.

And yes, the "thongs" thing has caused some hilarious misunderstandings.

There was a page on Australian slang on the wiki somewhere... Here: Australian Accent. Be aware, however, that you are likely to be mocked for greeting an Australian with "G'day mate", and we do indeed call them prawns rather than shrimp.

They call Brisbane Brissie or Bris Vegas sometimes (I personally loathe that last one).

We have a lot of different brand names for stuff. If you want to drop the name of a snack food or a fast food chain, double check to make sure we actually have them.

I believe there was some legal flap concerning Hungry Jacks/Burger King and to this day I'm not sure which is which.

In Australia it's called Hungry Jacks, I think it was some copyright thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_Jack%27s

And anyone from England is a "Pom" (shortened form of "Pommy Git"), the accepted plural of which is "bloody Poms".

This is one of the few matters on which we agree with the Aussies (unlike the origin of pavlovas)

Certain Poms will try to tell you that "Pom" actually refers to Aussies as it's "an acronym for Prisoner Of Mother England (POME) due to Australia being a former penal colony" which is right up there with "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" and "Fornication Under the Consent of the King" as far as completely ludicrous and spurious acronymic origins go.

The etymology of "Pom" is "uncertain", the two leading contenders both reference "pomegranate" - either as Rhyming Slang for "immigrant" or due to the red colour which was typical of recent arrivals (used to a climate in which "summer" can be measured in hours) to the sunnier climes of Australia.

Whatever its origin, the term has always been applied to people from England, not to Aussies or Kiwis.

Another point: if a person whines or otherwise loudly complains in a moaning/whining tone, it's "whinging" (Pron: "winjing") - which is pretty much a hanging offence.

I can't for the life of me think why I'd suddenly think of that after mentioning Poms

edited 21st Mar '13 4:40:41 AM by Wolf1066

I'm British by birth. but Immigration hasn't found me yet so ask away

edited 21st Mar '13 5:02:29 AM by joeyjojo

Adelaide being a small city is great, considering they end up stuck in my native Rhode Island and we kinda don't do big cities here.

I like the idea that all the Amaricans call her Pandora but her brother calls her Pando. They are orphan twins so they'd be really close. Do Australian siblings refer to each other any particular way or would the standard bro/sis thing apply.

I'm really glad they could be expected to get a lot of American references since I'm not going for Fish out of Water. More like "wow all these people stuck away from their homes and/or families but those two are stuck really far from home".

[ Air travel, public transport, and gass stations have all been recently rendered defunct do to global pandemic]

I think I really like the phrase "quit whinging"

Pandora is an eletronics expert issues/differing terminology there?

Chaos's first line spoken line in my work is something like (referring to my main character)"Woah, isn't it a bit premature to be naming her? We don't even know if she's going to pass the test." Can you guys think of a "more Australian" way to phrase that so that Ace gets a little hint that he's not a local boy.

Thanks Guys

(I seriously need to work on some more dialog)

edited 21st Mar '13 4:56:49 PM by HistoryMaker

Be mindful of differences in terminology of everyday things - what Americans call the "trunk" of a car, we call the "boot" and I think the Australians do the same. They'd understand "it's in the trunk" but may be more likely to say "I'll just sling it in the boot."

Just little things that would be automatic.

Using the term "mate" when referring to a friend ("he's me mate", "I'm going out with me mates") or when being casual and friendly to a stranger. ("You orright, mate?")

Casual/off-hand attitude. "Just chuck ya stuff in the boot/room/shed" rather than "put".

edited 21st Mar '13 6:39:49 PM by Wolf1066

Also, Fosters is not the national beer of australia.

'Bonnet', not hood, too. At least, that's what I've always called it.

I don't think there is an 'Australian' way of saying that. There is a more informal way of saying it ("Steady on, isn't it a bit early to be naming her? sh hasn't even passed yet") but I don't think there is a way to announce 'This guy is Australian' in a single line of dialogue. Not without going into stereotypical "Gday mate, I've just finished feeding my pet kangaroo" territory.