As Australia IT reported yesterday, Microsoft announced before yesterday "that its Australian subsidiary was proposing a list of quintessentially Aussie words for inclusion in the next version of productivity software products."
The report, titled "Aussie lingo gets guernsey in Office", quoted what a Microsoft officer said: "Many varieties of English can be heard in Australia, in films and television programs, as well as from the school playground, immigrants and tourists, and it is a great initiative from Microsoft to recognise Australian culture in its new version of its Office product."
It is true, indeed. I often see lots of underlined words in my Office document windows after I relocated to Australia because the default language of my Office is US English and the built-in spell checker highlights all the Aussie words in opened Office documents with red underlines. It rarely happened when I was in China. I had been used to writing documents in American English for working with my partners in the US and UK. While in China, I would even feel bitter if I saw any highlighted words after spell-checking. ;-))
Today, I talked about this news with an English teacher who is currently teaching IELTS courses at a TAFE college in Sydney. She kindly explained to me for the most Aussie words in the above-mentioned news. I simply list these Aussie words and her brief explanations as follows (except the ones in italic):
bogan - A person who is of a white or indigenous lower class background. (Wiktionary)
bonzer - great, good, excellent
cockie - confident
cooee - a loud call, not close to
dag - disagreeable
dinky-di - Australian
dob - tell
g'day - hello
galah - idiot
jackaroo - Young or inexperienced stockman or farm hand. (Wiktionary)
motza - cheese?
onya - (good) on you
rough-and-tumble - rough, rude, everyday slang
ridgy-didge - good, OK
sanga - sandwich
sheila - woman, girl
sickie - a sick day, a day off work
trackies - track suit pants
Ug boot - a boot with wool lining
ute - utility
wuss - scared
Another reference: Australian or Aussie Slang
http://www.dunway.com/html/aussie_slang.html
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