Watch out for the killer squirrels! 🐿️We’re very much in “silly season” right now in the UK 🤪 Not long ago, a friend posted a link to a news item published the day before about an audacious missionary being killed by the uncontacted people of North Sentinel Islandhttps://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/man-killed-uncontacted-tribe-after-30620890 My immediate thought was “no, not another […]
Ask what’s most unique about Australian English 🪃, the answers usually are our accent and slang✔️. However, there are also a number of uniquely Australian English words in regular use, even in formal situations, that Australians are surprised to find are not used everywhere else in the English-speaking world (OK, sometimes also in New Zealand🥝, […]
Are you a fan of the cult TV comedy show The Office?🕺And which version: the UK one 🇬🇧? The US one 🇺🇸? The French one 🇫🇷? The Indian one 🇮🇳 or any of the other 13 variants made? 📣 News in is that an Australian 🇦🇺 version of The Office will be hitting our screens […]
Today (Monday), 29 May 2023 is a “bank holiday” in the United Kingdom, our third this month! 📆Now this term “bank holiday” often confuses many people not from the UK or Ireland. Does this mean that it’s a holiday for banks only? 🧐 Absolutely not! “Bank holidays” in the UK and Ireland are what are […]
Last Saturday Australian 🇦🇺 🎭 comedy legend Barry Humphries passed away aged 89. You might know Humphries better as Dame Edna Everage 👓🌺, the vicious-tongued housewife-turn-international gigastar from the Melbourne suburb of Moonee Ponds (yes, such a place does exist). What is less acknowledged is that as one of Australia’s most widely known cultural exports, […]
Now this might sound a bit random 🤨 but this is something you’ll hear all the time, in all places… in department stores in Australia 🇦🇺. How come? 🧐 In most English language-dominant countries, “Doona” will be in reference to the popular Israeli-invented baby car seat that converts into a stroller/pushchair/pram 🚼 “Manchester” would be […]
Eshays and Adlays: the latest bunch of Pig-Latin-speaking, Nike-wearing young bogans (vilified poor working-class people) to cause massive moral panic in Australia 🇦🇺 My 11-year-old Aussie nephew warned me the other day that the new skate park 🛹that the council is building near his home is going to bring all the “eshays” there. Now that […]
💪🏼 Calisthenics (US English) or Callisthenics (UK English), one the biggest crazes in fitness worldwide, is a form of strength training using bodyweight exercises and minimal equipment… except in Australia, where it means something rather different. Do a search for “calisthenics” in Australia and what you’ll get are loads of images of young girls dressed […]
Something Australian (but no way uniquely) today… Do you fancy an escape from the rat race and going for a seachange 🌊, treechange 🌳 or e-change 💻? These terms all describe different forms of migration of people of all ages ⏳, wealth brackets 💸 and professions 💼 from Australia’s big cities 🏙 to provincial and […]
