A new book forays into the history of Australian English and speculates on where it's going.
KEY POINTS:
Swimmers, cossies, togs, bathers, dick pointers, dick stickers, sluggos and budgie smugglers are just some of the names Aussies have for swimwear.
But how did these terms make their way into the common lexicon? How long have they been around? And is it significant that former Labor PM
Bob Hawke would be happy to use a slang term that Liberal ex-minister Alexander Downer might avoid?
These are the type of questions examined in a new book launched in Canberra last week.
Speaking Our Language: the Story of Australian English charts the development of the Australian accent as well as the origin of popular words and phrases.
Author Bruce Moore doubts any other nation has created as many terms for swimming costumes as Australia.
The latest, and perhaps most colourful, has only been around for seven years.
"Around 2001 the term 'budgie smugglers' took off in Australia," Dr Moore said.
"There's some evidence overseas for a term 'grape smugglers', and it's possible the Australian budgie smugglers was modelled on that, but it's such a colourful expression it's taken off."
Dr Moore, director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre at the Australian National University in Canberra, said the first printed use of the term was in a 2002 Rivers clothing and footwear catalogue.
The catalogue refers to an employee who "turned up for our first summer catalogue shoot wearing nothing but a pair of budgie smugglers and his Rivers sandals".
As well as delving into bathers, Dr Moore provides the first extensive history of the Australian accent.
And he makes a bold prediction - the broad Aussie drawl exemplified by Paul Hogan, Steve Irwin and Kath and Kim is almost dead.
As is the cultivated form of Australian English often called the Queen's English.
Dr Moore says the Australian accent was established in Sydney in the early days of the colony.
"By the 1830s what we recognise as the Australian accent was established among the children of convicts, ex-convicts and free settlers," he says.
There were at least 100 different British dialects in Sydney at the time and kids picked up pieces of each.
The general accent to emerge "was an accent that got rid of any particular dialect features, so no one could ever say, for example, you're speaking in an accent from Devon", Dr Moore says.
It was described as "pure" by overseas visitors.
This foundation accent then spread out from Sydney, which explains the "extraordinary" consistency of Australian speech across the continent.
But at the end of the 19th century something strange happened that resulted in Australian English developing a split personality.
It was decided children should be speaking correct, or received, pronunciation and schools started teaching elocution. As a result 10 to 15 per cent of the population started speaking cultivated English.
"It was the kind of accent that carried the values of Empire," Dr Moore said.
In response - or "conflict" as Dr Moore puts it - a broad accent started developing in the 1920s along class and geographical lines.
This "consciously broader accent" encapsulated Australian values and attitudes through World War II, Dr Moore said. A more general form of Australian English was spoken by the majority of the population.
So why have the extreme forms now almost vanished? Dr Moore argues it's because Australia severed its social and economic ties with Britain in the 1960s.
"The attitudes towards Empire and therefore the cultivated accent started to shift," he says.
While there are still extreme accents, like former prime minister Bob Hawke with his broad accent and former foreign minister Alexander Downer with his cultivated one, the author of Speaking Our Language says they are disappearing fast.
A broad accent is now associated with comedy acts like Paul Hogan and Kath and Kim. Or it's seen as a self-conscious performance, as with the late Steve Irwin.
Dr Moore says the middle road is here to stay.
"Ironically, we're back now as we were in the 1830s and 1840s," he said.
"And all the evidence is showing it will remain absolutely stable."
What hasn't remained stable is the use of rhyming slang, which has steadily decreased over the past 130 years.
One of the earliest examples is from the 1870s.
Pom, used to describe someone from England, began life as "Jimmy Grant", which rhymed with immigrant and was an insult hurled at new arrivals.
By the late 1890s it had become "pomegranate", which was then shortened to "Pommy Grant" then "pommy" and "pom".
In the past 30 years rhyming slang has become "very rare" because it's seen to be dated.
One of the few recent examples is "Barry Crocker" for a shocker.
Speaking Our Language also explores the integration of Aboriginal words into the mainstream vocabulary.
Dr Moore says the 400 words in common usage today came from 80 different indigenous languages and are mostly used to describe flora and fauna or other "things".
A survey of newspapers in July last year found the most common Aboriginal word is kangaroo, followed by wallaby. "But I suspect that's influenced by the Wallabies rugby team."
Next comes waratah, also the name of the NSW rugby team, followed by koala, billabong, kookaburra, dingo and wombat.
All these words come from a Sydney language or one nearby. They were adopted early on in Australia's history with uniform spelling by the 1830s.
* Speaking Our Language by Bruce Moore is published by Oxford University Press.
- AAP
