BadgeIsBack

'Bring back the Biff'.

It's a tabloid NRL Sydney thing - on the TV. If memory serves. I am quite partial to NRL when I feel like it.

Jon77

Teenage girls are the worst, they usually put the word 'like' or the sentence 'and I was like' in a conversation over and over and over ......

'And I like... went over to her place... and we like..... had an argument.... and I was like... soooooooo over it...... OMG'

There seems to be a pause after say every 3 words and this tends to be in some fake put on posh accent.

brissybee

My latest annoyance is tv presenters who say "toddle" when they mean to say "total".

Mike at Taree

Talking of fake accents, those boofy boy home improvement guys on shows like Better Homes and Gardens with their gravelly "strewth mate ocker cobber fair dinkum" accents where all diphthongs are exaggerated to "oy".

I bet when they get off the camera and drive their Audis home to their posh North Shore villas they don't charge through the door booming "geez darls that tucker smells bonzer, ey, fair dinkum could eat a dead dingo...".

edit: another pet hate of mine is that same cohort of women I whined about in my OP, they don't seem able to pronounce the letter "t" unless the word begins with it.

"I'll see wad I can do abardid"

and..... boom tish..... just listened to same cohort on ABC News 24 and a 30 something female reporter who was talking about Boyt people looking to seddle in a more secure hoyme.

Chris N Lora

Sorry, I think you have been away from UK for to long, you would be very surprised what sort of person will live in say Hackney E.8 and SW.19 nowadays ... the post code I came from had no reflection on how I spoke, i lived in East and was never connected with a londoner accent!

Zen10

Maybe. I was thinking of the difference in northern and southern postcodes, etc.

BadgeIsBack

Those blokes are probably tradies or lower-middle class blokes who have made it good and got a contract on the telly so can afford to get back to the N shore. But they have to appeal to a tabloid audience primarily.

That female accent has an equivalent in the UK too. It's a derivation of an old fashioned accent where vowels are lengthened and consonants are shortened - only, for Australia, the nasal quality is increased.

I think it is fair to say it depends. There are still indicators though that can signal background, make no mistake. Post code is not necessarily one of them, true.

Zen10

None of them are necessarily indicators. They;re just things that you can use to tell class sometimes. England is the most class-based society on earth, outside of places like Japan and India. The thing is most people stay within their own class their whole lives and see only that. That does not mean other classes do not exist, and we should remember that Britain has the worst rate of social mobility in the developed world. These things are not coincidental. Look at the gags the toffs made about Carole Middleton, or the jokes aimed at Osborne because he didn't go to Eton.

BadgeIsBack

If you can tell 'background' then arguably it is an 'indicator'!
Zen, you have to define mobility. If the majority of the population think they are middle class then surely it's all academic. It is true that many people think they are middle class because they have skilled jobs and consume and participate in society - and this is why people talk about classless Britain. I think this is one of the most significant aspects of modern life.

I think we have to remember that in some cases, the established classes know their position and am proud of it. In some cases, they would have a different view. The gags, of course.

Germany is a place I gather whereby people still use titles (and for spouses) in ways that we don't in the Anglo-Saxon sphere.

Mike at Taree

Off topic but I have a Dutch friend whose surname is actually Van Castrikum, the Van being a noble thing apparently. She doesn't use the Van in Australia but it's on her passport and birth cert.

Kim67

Nearly every dutch person I know has the prefix Van at the beginning of their surname - it simply means "from" I think.

Kim67

I can't stand listening to the DIY guy on Better Homes and Gardens, his stupid laugh and accent drive me insane!! I find myself impersonating him for the whole time he's on and that in turn drives my family insane.

When I arrived home in Australia I cringed listening to morning radio or these types of shows. My kids always ask why shows on commercial tv are full of old bogans. Listen to the newsreaders on the ABC and it's a completely different ball game.

Zen10

Van is like von in German - it means 'from', but in Germany if your name starts with Von it is an indicator of nobility, but this is not the case in the Netherlands as far as I know.

Zen10

It's a much more formal society than ours, yup, but there is more respect for normal working people as well.

chris955

How can you say that? There is no class distinction in Straya mate The whole idea of class distinction here is so outdated its not funny. Most people we know are just ordinary working people, if that makes them working 'class' then fair enough, exactly the same as our friends in Australia. Some people need to drag themselves into this century.