CommonFreddy Woo writes, "My wife thinks calling the front room a lounge is common. Worse, a friend of hers recently admonished her daughter for calling a toilet, a toilet. Lavatory darling. It's lavatory."
My own mother refused to let me use the word 'oblong' instead of 'rectangle'. Which is just odd, to be honest.
What stuff do you think is common?
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chthonic, Thu 16 Oct 2008, 16:06)
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I don't think Aussies mean it......in a derogatory or racist manner. Some Aussies I have spoken to about it see it as an almost endearing phrase.
But me and my ex-pat pommie colleagues still cringe...
(, Wed 22 Oct 2008, 0:58, 1 reply)
lazyIn Australia it's never used to wrongly refer to Indian people like it is in the UK and is not used in a derogatory manner. An Aussie will call an Indian Indian and a Pakistani Paki. It's the lazy nature of the Aussie dialect: Bottle shop is bottl-o, service station is servo, afternoon is arvo, everything that can be shortened will be.
I think some parts of Australia can be pretty racist but not in the way referred to here. I cringe every time I hear 'wog' but the Aussies, and the 'wogs' don't have a problem with it.
(, Wed 22 Oct 2008, 3:37, closed)
maybeIt's just because everyone here is so aware of their own rcial history and that of their friends and families.
I.e. as a first generation Australian myself I can't really bag out anyone else for being of foreign descent.
(, Wed 22 Oct 2008, 4:24, closed)
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