There was yet another lament for the fading of older Australian words, recently.
This one came from James Button writing in The Weekend Australian.
He writes: ‘The Australian Language has changed over my lifetime (I’m 64), and the changes reflect how our country has changed. We’ve moved from British to American sourced words…’
And he goes on to catalogue a bunch of Aussie expressions that he no longer hears, and a string of Americanisms that crop up now and bother him.
Of course, I’ve come across this sort of thing often before.
Frequently the complaint is put in even stronger words, and we’re told that the Australian Language is dying.
My reply is always to quote Mark Twain’s famous remark that ‘reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.’
Of course, Aussie English is changing!
That’s because our language is a living language, not a dead language.
It is a living, flowing river not a putrid swamp!
We use expressions our grandparents didn’t, and our grandchildren use (or will use) others we don’t recognise.
It is nothing to be surprised about, or to lament.
Aussie English remains as inventive and as distinctive as ever—but it is alive, not dead and not living in the past!
As for the influence of Americanisms—the great Henry Fowler in his Dictionary of Modern English usage was complaining about the influence of America on British English way back in 1922.
And in my book The Story of Australian English I demonstrate that Aussies are not the dumb language-slaves of America.
For a start, we’ve always been selective about which Americanisms we adopt.
For a century or more we’ve heard the yanks call petrol ‘gas’ and not adopted it; and heard them call the chemist shop the ‘drug store’ and just ignored it.
And it is a two-way trade—there is evidence that American English has absorbed a lot of expressions coined here in Australia.
So, calm down James Button—there is nothing new here, and nothing to weep about!
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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
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