I had a great online chat this morning with a friend who shall be known here as The Queen, or the QOFE. The QOFE is based Stateside and after nearly five years apart we will once again be in the same room in January. We’re both very excited about this reunion and the three weeks of frivolity which will no doubt ensure, but today The Queen raised a concern which lingered long after our conversation was terminated with electronic smiley faces and x marks the spot kisses. The Queen is worried she won’t be able to understand me. I dunno why, she’s a ripper sheila who’s fair dinkum got the smarts. I always found it interesting that Americans had such trouble with my accent. We all speak English after all. Well, kind of, anyway, once you mix in the various Americanisms and Australian slang words we’re all famous for. Whatcha talkin’ about? I cannardly understand it when ya don’t talk my lingo! The QOFE has recently become a convert of the Hamish and Andy show, thanks to the good taste of her friend Down Under who knows a funny drive time segment when she hears one. Now a dedicated podcaster, the QOFE had to listen intently for the first week in order to ‘get her ear in’ to our accent. Inquiries from me – do you think they’re funny, then?? only prompted quizzical responses – I’m not sure, I can’t really understand anything they’re saying! A week later, she was flirting with unemployment as her colleagues had to deal with her inattention to them and unexplained hysterical laughing in the office while she ploughed her way through their back catalogue of podcasts. Score 1 to TTT for successfully crossing the International Humour Boundary. Is there a Nobel prize for that? There seems to be one for everything else. If there was, I’d surely be a shoe-in. Anyway, while the QOFE sits in the mountains of Colorado getting nervous about our potential communication issues (I know the sign language alphabet, will that help?) I got to thinking about how two English speaking nations settled by the same country could have ended up having communication issues. A quick Google of the issue revealed that our accent was actively established, ‘developed’ to form an acceptable, distinctive Australian sound. I wonder if there was one person in the Colony responsible for making up our new sound. That would have been a pretty cool job…..’now, instead of saying thank-you, a short, soft Q will suffice’. The snobby Colonists referred to the new sound as a detestable snuffle. Our early settlers did away with fields, meadows, woods, copse, spinney and thicket, dale, glen, vale and comb and instituted the widespread use of billabong, dingo, damper, bushwhacker. I mean – fair suck of the sauce bottle (and that’s SUCK, KRudd, not SHAKE) it’s hot in Australia and those fresh-off-the-boat convicts probably lacked the energy to form all the rounded English vowel sounds; much more efficient to flatten them out and shorten EVERY SINGLE word. Click for kilometer. Arvo for afternoon. Bloody oath for that certainly is very true, old chap. Pozzy for position. Hit the turps for embark on an all day drinking binge. Of course, there are those phrases that we have elongated, but in doing so are made far more humourous. Kangaroos loose in the top paddock is a long way of saying someone is intellectually challenged. Someone who is as mad as a cut snake is probably quite angry. And if something has gone walkabout it is lost. I for one am quite happy with my ‘detestable snuffle’ and it seems to me that International Diplomacy could be far more successful if everyone just listened to Hamish and Andy on the drive home. So go on, give it a burl and soon we might be able to make a doco about what a bonzer time the world (and the QOFE) is having now that we’re all talking ‘Strine.