BRINGING A BRITISH NORTHERN ACCENT TO OZ

Blinding sunshine and thick humidity greeted us to our new home. It was breakfast time early and already 27degrees in the shade when we set foot on the promised land but we knew that before we set off didn’t we, didn’t we?!

“Eeee luv, don’t worry, we’ll get yous t’it” himself said. “Yeah right”, said I “in time”. Time marches on, 30 years in fact, and they still strain themselves to understand what I’m saying.  “Wish you’d speak English” they say. “how long have you been here?” they say, with a grin but really meaning that they haven’t quite caught ‘that last bit’. Well I thought this was going to be easy, I mean we moved to an ‘English speaking’ country, didn’t we? We chose not to move to a country where it would mean wrapping our tongue around new sounds and verbs and misunderstandings. After all, aren’t a lot of the citizens of this golden land descended from the British so, ergo speak English, just like we do?

Well you wouldn’t think so, mind you saying that, it would seem that the British from the south of the Jewel (ie: south of Watford gap) seem to be able to merge their vowels at lot easier than the Northerners do and in a matter of time, make themselves understood to the ‘Strines’ !

It is the vowels that get us every time, you know, aeiou. I can’t even pronounce them in Australian, never mind try to explain in writing. “How can you not?” I hear you ask. Well, I’ve tried, honestly, Ive spent many a laughing hour with Aussie friends trying to give me the lowdown on how to say things like bus, umbrella, eggs (that’s a cracker, pardon the pun) look, book, I could go on. So, in the spirit of mateship and at the risk of offending into losing our company, we agree to speak our own languages and understand the sentiment behind our statements. We get through.

Own languages? Well I’m told by those who have known the Aussie me for the longest time that the company of my own countrymen brings out the ‘foreigner’ in me. Just a word here and there can be caught by the local ears. “What language were you speaking to each other?” they ask.

“What? The Queens English say us. Don’t you?”!

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