Today a review of a small dictionary.
The True Blue Guide to Australian Slang was first published by New Holland Publishers in 2004.
The second edition came out in 2022.
This is the edition that I have just been reading.
There is no author credited on the title page, but the text is by the head of publishing at New Holland, Jenny Hunter.
The book is (for the most part) a delight—and is very attractively designed little hardback that captures the spirit of Australia.
If it is on sale at major tourist spots around the country it will sell well to foreigners trying to understand how we talk (and they will find it very helpful!)
Do I have any reservations?
Well, it repeats the mistake made by some other, similar, books by including slang terms that were not born in Australia.
For example, ‘argy bargy’ and ‘aggro’ were coined in Britain and are as familiar there as they are here.
Lenie (Midge) Johansen made the same mistake in her 1988 book The Dinkum Dictionary (in which many of the slang terms she records are not the least bit ‘dinkum’).
But back to The True Blue Guide to Australian Slang—I am happy to recommend it because it contains so much that is so good.
It is particularly good on some odd Aussie phrases. Here are some examples.
‘All over the place like the mad women’s breakfast’—about which Jenny Hunter comments: ‘With this rather sexist image Australian men conjure up a sense of total shambles.’
'Stir the possum’—which comes with the definition, ‘To disturb a metaphorical sleeping dog, to revive a dormant issue, to provoke an argument.’
Then there’s ‘Rather pick up a death adder than a shovel’ (or ‘Wouldn’t work in an iron lung’)—a further example of the imaginative abuse to which the work shy are subject in Australia.’
A favourite of mine is ‘Can talk under wet cement’—‘In a country that values the laconic, this Australian measure of garrulousness is one stage further up the scale from the ability to talk under water.’
If you have a friend in another country (or from another country) who is baffle by Aussie English, this is such a beautifully designed and produced little book that it might be the right gift for them.
(It’s available from Booktopia,)
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BY THE WAY...
If you'd like to see my A-Z list of Aussie slang, you'll find it here in the Australian Geographic website -- A-Z list of Aussie slang. Here’s the link: The A-Z of Aussie slang - Australian Geographic
The liveliest part of this website is usually the Q and A page -- be sure to check it out from time to time.
