Expand Your Australian Vocabulary - Part 1
There’s a few things you need to know when talking to an Australian: They frequently abbreviate words, add “ie”, “y”, or “o” to the end, and have idioms just as colorful as the southern phrases you’d hear at a truck stop. They also have words that don’t seem to have a logical foundation.
So Brisbane is called Brissy. Breakfast is Brekky. Present is Pressy. Biker is Bikie, Trucker is Truckie, etc.
It sounds less silly to me than it used to.
Bottle-o or bottle shop is a liquor store. Servo is a service station, meaning petrol station. Autogas is liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG which many cars run on. It’s basically a mixture of propane and butane. The Bonnet is the hood of the car and the Boot is the trunk of course.
Avocado is Avo which confused me when someone would say Arvo. Because the “r” is barely uttered, I had trouble at first. What does Arvo mean? It means Afternoon of course. I still haven’t figured out a good reason for that yet.
Fair Dinkum could mean “Are you telling the truth?” or “That’s the truth” as well as giving something a fair go or just Dinkum meaning work or exertion. The origins of this one are fairly nebulous, possibly of Chinese origin from Din Gum meaning real gold, or good gold. That feels a bit like an urban myth though as I haven’t found any credible sources to back it up. Namely, Google Translate spits out “Ground Warm Shareholders”, “Diener and ancient”, and “Tarantino aunt” for various translations of “Din Gum”.
One thing that doesn’t make sense is that Aussies shorten most words whenever they get the chance, but sometimes they’ll make them longer by adding an “o” or “ie” to the end of the word. For instance we know that French Fries are called Chips, but they can also be called Chippies. Why add the syllable? Chips is just fine.
The Army Surplus store is called the Disposal Store. A Cot refers to a baby’s crib. Concession Price would be referring to a Senior Citizen Discount.
Most of the words make sense if you think it through, but I’ve learned it’s best to err on the side of caution just in case a word means something completely weird.
