What's open and what's not this Easter in Australia...
Time to give a real-life example of Australian English.
🥚 Easter has always been a 4-day public holiday throughout most of Australia (it used to be a 5-day holiday in Victoria). Prior to the 1990s, that meant everything was closed for the whole period, except for some petrol stations ('servos'), making the Thursday before Easter a day of shopping panic.
Now it's a mix of what's open and what's not, depending on the day, retail type and, as is the case for many aspects of everyday Australian life, the state or territory. No-one seems to have a clear idea of what's happening, so that's why there are guides like this one
Looking at this guide, let's look at what Australian-specific vocab, terms and meanings are in use here.
🛒 Stores
These in Australia tend to refer to large retail places e.g. 'department stores'. Otherwise, smaller retail places are usually 'shops'. Exceptions include 'convenience store' (a US term adopted in Australia in the 1990s) and 'Metro-format store' – both being small, city-centre general retail spaces with long opening hours (think 7-11 and the like).
Each Australian state and territory used to have its own term for a 'corner shop' ('deli', 'milk bar', 'mixed business'), but these have largely disappeared in the past two decades.
However, when Aussies talk about going grocery shopping, we say we're 'going to the shops' (not stores).
🛍️ Westfield shopping centres
Australian-based international retail-mall chain Westfield has for decades had a near monopoly on large shopping centres in most of Australia that it's almost automatic to mention their brand name here. This also distinguishes from smaller shopping centres that are usually a strip of shops fronted by parking for cars.
🍾 Bottle shops
The standard Australian English term for 'liquor stores'. Aussies otherwise call them 'bottle-oes'. In most circumstances, 'bottle shops' are stand-alone stores or adjacent to supermarkets or 'hotels' (as suburban and rural pubs are generally named in Australia), and some have drive-through, so you don't have to leave your car to buy your grog.
Then there are typographical features, such as:
📍 spaces around dashes
📍 no full stops in acronyms or initialisms
📍 while in the USA and Canada each state, province and territory has a two-letter abbreviation, the ones for Australia's states and territories are either initials of two (NT, SA, WA) or three letters (ACT, NSW) or abbreviated words (Qld, Tas, Vic)
So these are just a few of the elements that make this text Australian.
🐣 Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates it!
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