Making sense of unintelligible accents and outrageous slang
In recent years, Canada has been inundated with visitors from Australia and New Zealand; they have flocked to our ski hills and small tourist towns. In an attempt to help the Canadian population in understanding what some consider unintelligible accents and outrageous slang, we have created an educational video in hopes of aiding some form of mutual understanding. But first, since we both hail from Down Under, here are a few tips on what not to say or do:
Top Tips:
– “Put another shrimp on the Barbie”: NO. Shrimp DO NOT go on the barbecue. They will get stuck.
– “Crikey!”: You’re NOT the Crocodile Hunter. I’d like to see you wrangle a 4-metre croc and live.
– Sticking your tongue out and screaming is NOT you doing the Haka.
– Australia and New Zealand are NOT the same country. Not even close.
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“But they’re pretty much the same”- WRONG. They aren’t, get a map or an encyclopaedia.
Brendan Stasiewich (left) and Bigoa Machar put on their best Aussie/Kiwi accent to varying degrees of success. Photo by Hannah Willinger – “Why would you move to Canada? That’s stupid”: It’s smart. Everything in Australia wants to either kill you or eat you, or kill you AND eat you. Why wouldn’t we move north to escape such a fate?
And last but not least, please don’t attempt the accent, you’ll get it wrong.
Thumbnail by Hannah Willinger
hwillinger@cjournal.ca, ljohn@cjournal.ca
The editor responsible for this article is Dan Ball, dball@cjournal.ca