Key To Communicate.

Words are a funny thing, agreed? It never ceases to amaze me, the wonders of words. Recently, my eyes have sort of been opened to see the beauty of English. It's true. We have thousands and thousands of words, each different, each holding its own meaning. However slight the difference, it is still unique in its own way. The old English: Jane Austen and Shakespeare, which I have grown to fascinate, to the modern English where everything we use these days are in the colloquial section. 


Well. This post is about the colloquial language that Australians tend to use, and some of them I have adopted into my daily speech too. I know that you know that I use 'so' and 'well' and 'anyway' way too much. 'Seriously' too. And when I say way too much, I mean way too much. I usually start every sentence with any one of those words, 'seriously' holding its own and forming a sentence in itself. (Sad solitary word.. sorry). Well (YOU SEE!), Australians have their own slang. Here are some of them: 


CBS. Pronounced as 'seebs'. It stands for 'can't be stuffed' means you can't be bothered (CBB exists as well too). Cbs is so rife that people put it into speech, on top of using them in virtual conversations (MSN, SMS). Eg. I cbs going to school tomorrow. Yes. They literally say 'I seebs going to school tomorrow'. Hah. 


Then there's BFFL. Pronounced as 'biffle'. It stands for 'best friends for life', usually referred to someone of the opposite sex. Haha. 


Then people here also use 'reckon' a lot. Instead of saying 'I think it wasn't good', they say 'I reckon it wasn't good'. I know, reckon is a normal word, but it being used in speech is very prevalent here. 


I reckon that (haha) 'fantastic' is also Australian. Or maybe it's just because coming from Malaysia and being surrounded by people, most of which aren't English Educated, I hardly ever hear or use the word at all back home. This is fantastic. How Australian, IMO. 


'Hardcore' and 'dodgy' are also used a lot here. I don't even know whether dodgy is a word because it's underlined in red. Haha. I will check tomorrow. They say everything is hardcore. 'Knitting is hardcore!' (or intense, I suppose, is also used a lot). 'That teacher is just dodgy.' Huh. 


Oh and I know this doesn't really count, but I do find it mildly amusing that people here say 'jokes!' instead of 'just kidding'. I know, I know, it is used back home. I guess I'm just not used to it. I still remember the times when we were all like 'jk jk jk' (just kidding) in virtual conversations. But now over here it's just 'aha! jokesss!' or something like that. 


Then there's 'far out' and the addition of 'as' behind an adjective. Far out, in my mind, is sort of a replacement for 'oh crap!' or 'wow!' or something along those lines. Eg. 'Far out man! She's so strict!'. The latter, I refer to Australians saying 'fun as' or 'hard as'. It basically means 'really' but being put after the adjective rather than before. Eg. 'That outing was fun as!' or 'That test was hard as!'. HAHA. I'm so amused. 


Apparently so many people here like to do the 'fob' thing. I'm actually pretty tired of it.. It's pretty lame, if you ask me. This happens only with Asians, or at least Asians doing this is all I've encountered (oh please don't let me see locals doing it too!). The 'fob' thing I refer to is speaking English in a fake Chinese/generally Asian accent. Seriously. MyChonny is a bad influence. Haha. But for some reason this fob accent is referred to as the Vietnamese accent (maybe because of MyChonny). So they constantly say 'do the Viet thing' in a fob accent. Fob itself is actually supposed to be a disparaging term for all things Asian (way of dressing, hair, speech etc). And I Googled it and apparently 'fob' is an (unofficial) acronym for 'Fresh Off the Boat', referring to those immigrants who just got off a boat. Pretty interesting right? 


I think that's about all of the Australian slangs and stuff. You definitely need to know that I'll be typing stuff like (Y), which is a keyboard shortcut used in MSN for a thumbs up sign. I will say 'thumbs up' more often now, as it has become a habit of mine. So sometimes I will type (Y) or thumbs up. Just like (8) stands for a musical note (also from MSN). I've also taken to using 'D:' which is a sad face which isn't really sad. As in not 'my heart is hurt' sad, just like.. nooo or something like that. Ok sorry I'm not thinking straight, can't explain properly. There's also D:< which is, in my opinion, very cute! It's like a frowny sad face, and I associate it with the onomatopoeia 'GARHHH!!' or for some strange reason, 'GNAW!'. Hmm.. I wonder what has happened to me. 


I think that's about it. I'm actually staying up because I'm just leaving my mousse on. Let it do its thing. It's mousse for teeth, by the way. I'm really tired. Cbs leaving it on for longer (HAHA just for the occasion). So I'm going to go. As a conclusion, think about how beautiful the English language used to be. But now we're using such stupid acronyms for words and stuff like that. Seebs? ARE YOU SERIOUS? Apparently so. Gnite! Sweet dreams! =D