Now that I'm an Ozzie citizen, I thought it would be prudent to learn the local lingo myself and to help other expats in Oz land too.

Feel free to post your fave Strine definitions on this thread.

Format:

Word/Phrase: Definition without actually translating.

Egg Samples:

Egg Nishner: A mechanical device for cooling and purifying the air of a room.

Enemy: The limit of. As in: Enemy tether.

Egg Jelly: In fact; really. As in: `Well, there's nothing egg jelly the matter with her.

Have fun!

A good move to start a new thread for this topic. (There are two or three earlier posts on the "Not so obvious things..." thread.) My contribution was "bim-bye"; "Why are you crying, Darling?" "I been bimbye a spider!" Also "Howdja like the play?" "It was mersten choiple."

Tell 'em about Emma Chisit, Al!

Indeed. It was your comment in that thread that inspired this thread. Thanks.

Ok, you're going to have to enlighten this Aussie. I got 'bimbye a spider' but what the flamin' heck does 'mersten choiple' mean?!

Most enjoyable (it was explained elsewhere otherwise I may have been looking for google again )

Bedder The opposite of worse

Some newsreaders make me cringe - they're obviously chosen for their attractiveness because it's certainly not for their diction.

When I was a little Aussie kid in my little Aussie primary school, we had elocution lessons. True! I still remember the teacher's name, Miss Purcell, and I also remember one of the phrases we had to practice saying (in our best posh voices). Heaven help anyone who didn't clearly enunciate each consonant, who mumbled, or even worse, who giggled

Two sticks across and a little bit of moss - it'll do, it'll do, it'll do!

Thank christ for that, I thought it meant something rude

Can't imagine what you were thinking

Yes you can, yacarn foome

Although the pronunciations of English words vary from place to place, Australian spellings remain unchanged from British spellings. Without that convention, Strine might have developed into a whole new language - a sort of pidgin. That's what has happened in New Guinea and the islands of the south-western Pacific.

In the 1970s, we spent three years working in The New Hebrides, now an independent nation called Vanuatu. There, the lingua franca was a pidgin-English called Bislama, used between the Europeans and the native Melanesians, and among the Melanesian communities who didn't all speak the same language. We never learnt to speak it properly, but settled for stringing English words together separated only by "long" and/or "blong" (= belong). We pretty much made it up as we went along. Since independence, the native politicians have changed the spelling of words to disguise their English origins.

It is now the main official language. The national motto (Wikipedia says) is long God yumi stanap. , which translates as “in God we stand”. But actually it's just a Strine-kind of mispronunciation: yumi is you-me, and stanap is stand-up. The Bislama word for "soon", bambae, is a rendition of “by and by”. "Everybody" is olgeta which looks vaguely Melanesian, but is actually just the way they say “all together”. Yumi olgeta is "both of us". And so on. Very cunning! Very Strine-like, really.

Love that. Didn't get it at first.

Have to apply the different accents. Love the challenge.

Fascinating! I love 'play on words', as in poetry and such, but never delved into anything other than that.

This is really the strine bible, been around for years, 1977 in fact,

Could be even earlier, Mike. 1965, Wikipedia says. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strine

I've read the same author's Fraffly Well Spoken, on how to speak posh English - funny to read out loud - but not Nose Tone Unturned. There have been knock-offs aplenty. I remember one on "New Zild" English, and I thought there was one called "Canajun, eh?" or similar - but I can't find any reference to it, so maybe there isn't. My wife and I still use "New Zild" when speaking of that country.

I'm with you. Can't understand a word of what's being said - must be that we Sandgropers are a little more refined. Old ocker sayings, bit of Noongar, bit of Yamatji, that's my limit.