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I wonder if foreigners have this much trouble with American?


Alpo

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I'm reading a mystery novel taking place in Australia. The slang is driving me crazy.

 

The girl is wearing tracky daks, which makes her a bit of a dag. There is mention of Wembley Ware, and one with a warren on it. She bought a bag of clinkers. She seems to be addicted to vanilla slice. Someone smokes rollies. And at the end of the book the ambulance takes through to the ED.

 

Thank God for Google.

 

Daks apparently where a brand of trousers, and just like all paper snot rags are Kleenex, all pants are daks. Trackie daks is the pants part of a track suit. A dag is someone that is not dressed all that nicely. Actually a dag is the poop infested wool around a sheep's butt, so yes, that sounds like it is not complimentary. Wembley Ware is a locally made porcelain thing, that has Australian animals on it. A Warren is a crawfish. Vanilla slice is a pastery and Clinkers are a brand of candy. Rollies are hand rolled cigarettes, as opposed to tailor mades. And the ED is the ER. It's the emergency department instead of emergency room.

 

Seems like once or twice a chapter I would have to Google a term.

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58 minutes ago, Alpo said:

I'm reading a mystery novel taking place in Australia. The slang is driving me crazy.

 

The girl is wearing tracky daks, which makes her a bit of a dag. There is mention of Wembley Ware, and one with a warren on it. She bought a bag of clinkers. She seems to be addicted to vanilla slice. Someone smokes rollies. And at the end of the book the ambulance takes through to the ED.

 

Thank God for Google.

 

Daks apparently where a brand of trousers, and just like all paper snot rags are Kleenex, all pants are daks. Trackie daks is the pants part of a track suit. A dag is someone that is not dressed all that nicely. Actually a dag is the poop infested wool around a sheep's butt, so yes, that sounds like it is not complimentary. Wembley Ware is a locally made porcelain thing, that has Australian animals on it. A Warren is a crawfish. Vanilla slice is a pastery and Clinkers are a brand of candy. Rollies are hand rolled cigarettes, as opposed to tailor mades. And the ED is the ER. It's the emergency department instead of emergency room.

 

Seems like once or twice a chapter I would have to Google a term.

I know what Tim Tams are. That’s enough for me. 

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Alpo, to your original question. Yes.

I have worked with people from all over the world and American slang is really tough for some people.

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I know what a bong is!

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12 hours ago, Pat Riot, SASS #13748 said:

Alpo, to your original question. Yes.

I have worked with people from all over the world and American slang is really tough for some people.

That's true for a lot people who learned English English or some variety thereof.  American is almost a totally different language, and there are regionalisms from various parts of the country.  For example, in some places "soda" is a drink made with ice cream and carbonated water, with perhaps flavoring syrup. But in other parts of the country "soda" or "soda pop" is a soft drink.  In the East and North "down South" refers to places below the Mason-Dixon Line.  In California that term is used by Northern Californios to refer to Los Angles (or "L.A.")!  I once worked with a young Frenchman who had learned English in school, in France.  Had to teach him American idioms (NO, not swear words!).  I was doing data reduction for a small aerospace firm, and we plotted data points on graph paper and then "smoofed" a curve to fit the points as closely as possible.  When he told me to "smoof" the lines, I replied, "You mean 'finagle' the data?"  He then asked me, "What means, fee-nagel?" So I explained it to him.  He then used the term properly from then on.  ;)

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I have also worked with foreigners. But none who have tried to learn Australian. The Aussies took the English language where no man has gone before. 

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29 minutes ago, Utah Bob #35998 said:

I have also worked with foreigners. But none who have tried to learn Australian. The Aussies took the English language where no man has gone before. 

Yeah...Down Under :D

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For a  portion of my career I worked with quite a lot of different Regiments in the British Army, when conversing, the standard comment always came up. "You British might have started the language, but we Canadians perfected it"! 

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1 hour ago, Dapper Dynamite Dick said:

For a  portion of my career I worked with quite a lot of different Regiments in the British Army, when conversing, the standard comment always came up. "You British might have started the language, but we Canadians perfected it"! 

Eh? ;)

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On 3/30/2019 at 12:29 PM, Alpo said:

I'm reading a mystery novel taking place in Australia. The slang is driving me crazy.

 

The girl is wearing tracky daks, which makes her a bit of a dag. There is mention of Wembley Ware, and one with a warren on it. She bought a bag of clinkers. She seems to be addicted to vanilla slice. Someone smokes rollies. And at the end of the book the ambulance takes through to the ED.

 

Thank God for Google.

 

Daks apparently where a brand of trousers, and just like all paper snot rags are Kleenex, all pants are daks. Trackie daks is the pants part of a track suit. A dag is someone that is not dressed all that nicely. Actually a dag is the poop infested wool around a sheep's butt, so yes, that sounds like it is not complimentary. Wembley Ware is a locally made porcelain thing, that has Australian animals on it. A Warren is a crawfish. Vanilla slice is a pastery and Clinkers are a brand of candy. Rollies are hand rolled cigarettes, as opposed to tailor mades. And the ED is the ER. It's the emergency department instead of emergency room.

 

Seems like once or twice a chapter I would have to Google a term.

 

I don't see a problem with any of that:P

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1 hour ago, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

When the show an American movie in Australia do they dub it in Australian?

 

Yep, its real annoying when the lips don't align with the words.

 

A bit like a bad Bruce Lee dubbed flick.

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I was taught "The History and Development of the English Language" in college by a gentleman from Persia. He spoke perfect English, his students...not so much.

 

Imis We have "expressive" terms in Southern speech

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46 minutes ago, Buffalo Creek Law Dog said:

I didn't know that John Wayne spoke French until I was posted to Quebec back in the 60's.

1979 romantic comedy. A Little Romance. Two 13-14 year old kids. The French kid is a serious movie-junkie, and when it starts he's in the theater watching True Grit.

 

It's been dubbed in French, and has English subtitles. The subtitles are directly translating the dubbed French dialogue, and it ain't the same. It's the Ned Pepper "one eyed fat man" scene.

 

The rest of the movie is kinda dumb, but that scene with True Grit in French. :lol:

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