Australian Words and Slang - My Downfall

When I first decided to stay in Australia, I vowed never to pick up their slang our use their words for things. Well, that didn't last long. I'm slowly but surely using some without thinking about it.

The other day I was walking through the store and I told DJ to grab a trolley, not shopping cart, trolley. Well damn.

We babysit one of DJ's cousins and about every other time I call his diaper a nappy.

The comforters or duvets that we put on our beds to make them look good and to keep us warm, are now almost exclusively known as doonas to me.

I'd say 8 times out of ten I now ask for biscuits rather than cookies and chips rather than fries. That one hurts the most I think. French Fries are an American favorite and we make fun of those who call them chips. But now, here I am, ordering chips with extra chicken salt.

And let's not get started on service stations/convenience stores. They are Servos here and I call them that more often than not.

And then there is the one that I thought I would never change. You know, catsup? Yeah, they call it sauce. And, it's just easier. (Sauce comes in huge and I mean super huge bottles here! My catsup loving kids would be in heaven.)

Are there still some that I can never imagine calling by anything but their American names? Yeah, of course. I just can't call a vagina a fanny. Fannies are butts. Period. End. Of. Story. Also, I will probably never use the word milkshake again. Their milkshakes are milk and flavor and occasionally a bit of ice-cream whereas ours are 95 percent ice-cream, five percent milk and maybe a few ice cubes. Here trucks are called Utes and I just can't call it that. To me Ute had a totally different meaning and is actually the name of someone I graduated high school with. So yeah, a truck will always be a truck.

And then there is this one thing that I have to mention. We call them the same in America as we do here but they have a lot of them here and I mean a ton. WTF is a roundabout. Seriously, they need to not be called that. They are intersections with a big circle and spiderwebs of lanes that make me car sick and scared to get hit. I think both countries should start a petition to do away with roundabouts or at least change their names. Who's with me?!

Until Next Time...