SLANG HAS ITS USES

Evening Star, Issue 23701, 8 October 1940, Page 8

SLANG HAS ITS USES

HEW EXPRESSIONS For the best part of half a century it has been evident that the everyday speech of Australians is not the same as that of the English, or, for that matter, of Americans. , Many Australians have doubtless asked themselves why no one has done anything about it, and lacking a conclusive answer, have pigeon-holed the problem and forgotten it (writes Sidney J. Baker, in the ‘ Sydney Morning Herald ’). If this had not happened, it is difficult to explain how Australia’s indigenous vocabulary, which probably contains 6,000 or more native, expressions* has received so little mention. A few, observers have written about it in the past, but none has put an accurate lexicographical yard-stick over ou? speech to find out how much of it truly belongs to Australians. They have usually been content to take a few examples of ,our slang, such as wowser* larrikin, dinkum, cobber, bonzer, sundowner, and squatter, and leave it a* that. Much has been lost in this way. The growth of Australian derivatives of the simple word "stock” provides an excellent example. Stockyard found it* way into use in Sydney in 1796. Succeeding it came stock-keeper in 1800, stockman in 1803, stockfarm and stockhouse in 1806, stockholder in 1820* stockrun 1825, stockhut 1828, stockstation 1835, stockwhip 1845, stockhorse and stockbook 1847, stockrider 1859, stoekroute 1866, and the verb to stock-keep in 1890. Our national destiny, which has placed great emphasis on primary production, has made it necessary for these expressions to emerge. " MERE SQUATTER.” Another example is “ which we inherited from English dialect through America. Until well into the 1840’s “ squatter ” was a term of opprobrium, describing as it did men who occupied land to which they had no title, and who specialised in raiding the properties of respectable settlers. In a pamphlet issued by the South Australia Company about 1839, reference is made to “ the mere squatter . . . content to lead a savage life in the wilds, remote from the decencies of society, with no company but his felou dependants.” Substantial changes have been wrought in the use of the word since those days. From it have been derived squatterdom, squatterarchy, sqnattocracy, squattage, squatting, inside squatter, and outside squatter.

Farmers are often termed “ cookies.” The original use was “ cockatoos,’*■ which was current about 1860, as was the variation, “ ground parrots.” We often hear of a mountain “ range,” but most people are probably unaware that the adjective,, ‘"rangy,” mountainous, is a local product, having been current since IBBQ or earlier.

A “ case,” a love affair, properly “ a case of Jove,” is_ found in* this country in 1859, which anticipates the English use. “ Cranky ” (stupid) is used by an Australian writer in 1848, but it is not recorded in England until after 1850. “Ganging,” the work of a gang of men, has been in service here since before 1849, but the Oxford Dictionary’s first English record is 1865. “To talk through one’s neck ” was noted in Australia in 1890 and 1891, but no English use is found before 1904. In its sense of “ a house which has only one story,” the word “cottage" has been deemed worthy of recognition by the Oxford Dictionary as a particularised Australian use. It is obvious that something ha* been happening to the English language in this country of which few people are fully aware. Warb, dart, lurk, rort, ziff, shelf, dink, winge, poon, cronk, plonk—these are some of the hundreds of expressions which seemingly have materialised from nowhere as lingual sloughings in the course of our social development. Barrack, skerrick, fossick, sack, and nark are a few more. From the aboriginal we have borrowed the exceedingly serviceable jambuck, cooee, dily bag, corrohery, humpy, billy, billabong, and bogie. LAW OF NECESSITY. These, however, represent nothing more than a few foundations upon which our indigenous language is being built. From the bandicoot have come such valuable similes as bald as a bandicoot, poor as a bandicoot, bandy as a bandicoot, banney as a bandicoot, not *the brains of a bandicoot. Alliteration is, of course, largely responsible. We talk of someone being “up a gumtree,” when he is in a quandary. “As mad as a gumtree full of galahs ’* needs no comment. This is how language grows. From the simple essentials of a new environment a host of new terms have developed as the inevitable accompaniment not only of the necessity imposed on us to speak in terms of our own existence, but from a natural urge to find new and more satisfying ways of expressing ourselves. How* otherwise would we call a kookaburra by anything but that name? Here are some of our offerings: Laughing jackass, jackass, jack, jacko, kooka, na-ha pigeon, woop-woop pigeon, settler’a clock (recorded in 1826), shepherd’s clock (1874), and bushman’s clock (1880). Tea drinking has been recognised a* an Australian habit for generations, and it is only natural that it should have brought in its train several colloquial expressions, among them thm terse but serviceable “cup-pa,” a cup of tea, “ to take tea with someone, ■ to associate with a person (1888), “ easy as tea drinking,” exceedingly easy (1893), and “ a cup. of tea,” a person, as in “ a very strong cup of tea he was ” (1893). To point, smoodge, roll up at a meeting, cornstalk, new chum, pommy, jackeroo, rootseabout, never-never, on the wallaby, Murrumbidgee whaler, swaggie—with these terms and thousands of their kind Australia has ventured into the world of slang (although many of them are scarcely to be regarded as slang to-day) on her own account on a scale of extraordinary vastness, and slang has a strange knack of surviving prejudices against it.