Welcome to Gaia! ::

I know we have a couple members from Australia, and one Englishman... We're not quite internationally quite yet, but I think we need one of these threads to discuss the mutual weird and foreign things all of us do lol.

I'm betting some of us have never left our continents, and (like probably all kids our age) wish they could travel the world. So this is a way to wink


discuss: culture, international stuff, history, politics, world domination, holidays..... conspiracies...

Aaww not much discussion happening here yet! Allow me to make some measely contribution smile

I am one of the Australian members you referred to.

Starting about 10 years ago, continuing over a period of 3 years, we had a series of student teachers from Wisconsin stay with us while they were guests at my school, observing teaching practices and fulfilling part of the teaching placements over here.

We often ran into language barriers with each of them. You would never have expected such variation between Australian English and American English. Though, with Australian film and tv saturated with American productions, we had less trouble understanding them than they did with us.

Some of the funniest/most awkward translation misunderstandings:

* (Aus) thongs - (USA) flip flops
*(Aus) skivvy - (USA) turtleneck

Also, one morning when discussing plans for the weekend, our guest teacher (I forget which one) said she had thought about maybe driving to Sydney for the afternoon (we live in Melbourne). She failed to see why we found this so amusing. Yes, on a map, Sydney doesn't look that far away, but you certainly aint driving there just for an afternoon. I think a lot of people from overseas, particularly from Europe where everything is so close to everything else, fail to realise just how big Australia is. To get from where we lived in Melbourne at the time to Sydney is almost 900km (560miles) and would take at least 9 hours, if you drove continuously.

And, for the record, there are not kangaroos hopping along the side of the road, and you are not allowed to keep native fauna as pets. I have only seen wild koalas on a handful of occassions. Unfortunately however, it is true that we have some of the most deadly animals in the world, including a large and varied assortment of spiders - i HATE spiders! In the last week we have killed 4 red back spiders (poisonous) in the house (thankfully only small ones), and once we saw a baby brown snake (poisonous) in the front garden. I love the birds though. In our garden at any one time there may be 2 magpies, 6 currawongs (both Australian native members of the raven family), a butcher bird, 2 kookaburras, 15 sulphur crested cockatoos (or more), 6 yellow crested black cockatoos (rare) 6 gallahs, 30+ crimson rosellas (too hard to count them all) 2-30 lorrikeets, 20-30 King parrots, a handful of indian minas, some willy wagtails, wattlebirds, a very large owl (we think he might be a powerful owl - very rare) and occassionally some large bird of prey, not sure if he's a hawk or a kestrel or maybe a kite, but not big enough to be an eagle.

well that was a strange assortment, wasn't it. oh well, it fills the space out a bit xp Let me conclude by saying, please, anyone from outside Australia, unless you have lived here long enough to pick up the accent or at least the flow and syntax of the language, never, ever attempt to say "G'day" - it is always painful to witness and it never works - just stick with "hello" for now, k?

Yay someone replied!

lol I use Uni though xd
I mostly do it because if I used "CSU"="California State University system" most people online wouldn't know what that stands for. They think CSI XD.....

lol I think "thongs" mean both thongs and flip flops to some Americans, I know in Hawaii no one called them thongs ever lol. California they do, but I don't know if it's like that in every state.

Cheeva mentioned this vegemite thing, reminds me of Omnidrink from Gaia rofl It sounds highly amusing LOL.

yes I noticed that also rofl rofl most people are used to American tv by now (except maybe Asia) but we Americans are sooo isolated. xd .....
Australia must be too a bit though I'd guess? Since you're off in the ocean. At least we have Canada and Mexico attached to us lol.

>> It sucks though, because I've seen people act so meanly to international students just because their accents are hard to understand (for the general public) and overly sheltered Americans can be noobs.
I don't find you guys hard to understand though.
Chee did seem to have a watered down accent when she was talking on her tutorial?

I did however have an argument with an Australian student as to whether "markers" were "colors" XD..... rofl
Did your Americans give you the "peace symbol?" XD.... someone told me that is swearing in places like England, I don't know if it is there.

And I had another international student do the same thing as your silly teacher, I forget where they were from, but they wanted to drive the length of California in a day lol!
It's about 8-9 hours drive without traffic.
lol I think your teacher is silly,or they come from the East Coast where the states are tiny. xd
lol I wish I could what this American section looked like, I bet I'd buy like 40$ worth of stuff..

Let's see......

Texan:
My family raises horses and rabbits, and my sister raises goats (for livestock shows).
I say y'all a lot.
We've walked our horses 5 miles through town on the side walks and across roads.
No, I don't where a cowboy hat. (Though, I'd love one to do a certain cosplay.)

Dr Pepper is FERRAL!! gonk


the american section in the store mostly consists of Hershey's chocolate, but there's other kinds of lollies (candy) there too (can't remember what exactly)

I generally don't have any trouble understanding accents of international students. The only time people are a little tricky to understand is when they don't really speak any english (going to make it tricky to study anything, but we get sooooo many people who can barely understand "would you like a bag?" and we sell HEAPS of copies of chinese translations of textbooks (I work in the campus bookshop, btw))

Australian accents vary ENORMOUSLY. We do NOT all speak like Steve Irwin (crocodile hunter). Mostly people who do speak like that fall into 1 of 4 categories: 1- "Bogan" - our equivalent of "redneck"/"trailer trash", characterised by tracksuit pants (sweat pants), loud voices, much swearing, harsh, nasal accents, alcohol consumption, and typically centered in the cheaper outer suburbs. 2- CUBS (Cashed Up Bogans). Like regular bogans, only with money. eg: Lleyton Hewit. 3- Sports players, particularly football/rugby players (categories 2 and 3 often overlap) 4- tradies (builders, plumbers, electricians, etc) (not all tradies, just the yobbo ones) (yobbo = similar to bogan)

If you ever come to Australia and encounter anyone from one of these categories, they may say something that sounds like "G'dayhowagarn?" Do not be allarmed! This is bogan-speak for "G'day, how are you going?"

here is an interesting site if you are intrigued by Australian slang: http://www.hostelscentral.com/hostels-article-110.html

The Dr. Pepper thing--I used to think so too, but I'm okay with it now. XD
And also, watch out--sometimes food from different places tastes different from how it should when it's from the original country. XD Like McDonald's in China vs McDonald's in US.

And then there are people like Arni here who have an inexplicable English accent XD

People always seem to think I have an English accent - i don't! People are often quite surprised to learn I was born in BoxHill xp and the furthest I've been from home is Queensland lol