As the sun sets on the Australia and culture of my youth, I salute the memories and legacies of over 200 years since the arrival of Captain Arthur Phillip, of a People who are fast disappearing into a sea of tik tok, facebook, twitter, and leftist ideologies.
Our language, our music, and our culture are being swallowed up and devoured by a zealous group of misguided, ill-educated and brainwashed ignoramuses who should have attended the Flysa Institute of Patriotic Studies.
Their student debt would be non-existent, and their education would have been infinitely more informed and beneficial.
But today, I wish to consider The Flysa Institute of Linguistic Studies.
The modern crop of singers sound to me like American clones. In fact, I don't think I've heard an Aussie accent from any Australian singer since Slim Dusty and John Williamson. Modern songs might be discernible to the young globalists, but they're double Dutch to me.
But this one works. John Williamson, this video is dedicated to Steve Irwin's Memorial Service on Animal Planet. Filmed at Australia Zoo on Steve Irwin's passing.
This goes back years. I recall the following singers:
Juice Newton "Just call me angel of the morning, just brush my teeth before you leave me.”
The Bee Gees "Bald-headed woman, More than a woman to me.”
Toto "I bless the rains downing apricots.” and
Bob Dylan "The ants ate my friend, he’s blowin' in the wind.”
Hamlet Ant Esq laments the loss of his close friend Yorick who perished when a group of rabid left wing ants ate Yorick and looted his anthill.
Now it is unintelligible caterwauling.
With more and more people on the move worldwide, although the language may be mastered, the accent lingers. There are exceptions of course. Many Australians can Iive in the US for years and not acquire an American accent. But a few I can think of, such as Greg Norman, seem to have developed the US drawl overnight. During WWII, they were known as Woolloomooloo Yanks.
I grew up with European immigrants with whom I went to school, and they have remained my friends for life. When in later life when I was a young engineer in the early 1960s, employed on the joint US/Australia North-West Cape Naval Communication Site in Western Australia, there were many recent immigrants from Italy employed there. Unlike our present multi-cultural arrivals who keep to their own language and treat our language as secondary, those young men adopted our language immediately.
They loved the “iconic” Australian game of two-up in which two pennies were flipped in the air by the “spinner” from a small handheld board, and the players bet against each other as to whether the coins would land both heads, both tails, or one of each. I can still shut my eyes and hear one of the Italian players seeking a bet calling out “A poun’ or two he tail”.
Then during the evening while all were clustered around the billiard table one would hear “Unintelligible…fcukall, Unintelligible…fcukall, Unintelligible…fcukall and so on and on.
I once telephoned the State Rail Authority, as it then was, with a query. A gentleman from the subcontinent answered my call, and before I could speak seemed to advise me to "get real". When the penny dropped, I realized he was saying State Rail and he proved to be most helpful.
It is a double-edged sword. When British novelist Monica Dickens was conducting a book signing in Sydney, an Australian lady with a heavy strine accent enquired as to the price. Ms Dickens duly endorsed the fly leaf of the book to Emma Chisit.
I am not without sin. Once in Paris, I tried to purchase a ticket on the Metro using my best schoolboy French, only to be informed by the disdainful ticket clerk that "I do not speak zee Engleesh”.
Apart from strine, which is a dying beast being replaced by some semblance of a universal accent, all with at least a touch of the American drawl, we are beset by legalese - and politico-speak.
Fortunately, legalese is being replaced gradually by more easily understood English, such that "In the premises, the aforesaid first party of the first part and the second party of the second part, dost severally covenant” is now more commonly"Fred and Margaret agree".
And then of course there was Julia Gillard being in a state of “high dungeon” and making points by the use of “hyperbowl”.
The use of "newspeak" is on the increase, heading for the cut-off year of 2050, when according to Orwell it will completely replace "oldspeak". The only adjective of praise we hear these days is "iconic”, arid the only noun used.to describe an unpleasant amount is “litany”. What they will be in thirty years is anyone’s guess.
It might be English as she is spoke, but let's eschew obfuscation and the hyperbowl, and use gooder English and correct pronunction.
That’s about it, me old Chinas.
Monty's creation above of Fred and Margaret is a bloody little pearler if you ask me.
