It's such a Strine having conversations with the Yanks

This might be useful if we do end up moving to the US next year!!
"A closed mouth gathers no foot"


Catherine GaltonDecember 8, 2006


I'VE just moved to the US and I'm taking a vow of silence. Not because I can't find an opening in conversation for all the mindless exercising of the first constitutional right but because it has recently dawned on me that I sound like a washed-up cast member of Crocodile Dundee.
And so do the rest of you.

It was during my first conference call back home to Australia. Six investment bankers (read, sheep shearers in suits) all took turns to give a market update. I listened in horror to the dropped Rs and the bludgeoned consonants, giving the conversation a decidedly slack-jawed feel. Red-faced, I turned to my new colleagues in horror and in my most worldly accent asked: "Do I sound like that?"

I could hear the individual drops from the cheap, decaffeinated, drip-filter machine as the verdict was delivered. The nodding around the table was unanimous.

I cast my mind back over the first four weeks since my arrival. That's why nobody knew what a Mars Bar was. Because I'd been saying Mahs Bah. And when I asked to have a stickybeak at a file, my manager thought I was asking to stick my something somewhere and threatened to report me to HR. And it dawned on me why the guys have been so friendly, after I told them we wear thongs to work on casual Friday back home. At least when I proclaimed that I needed a sausage sanga after too many wines, the Pom offered to join me.

Take comfort, my countrymen, the Yanks aren't without their strange sayings. If referring to u-turning as "banging a ewey" isn't indecent enough, I was told that if I "blew off a client" I wouldn't be invited back to further meetings (they didn't mention this in my visa application). No amount of Seinfeld, Sex and the City or Springsteen will prepare you to seamlessly enter American culture. I offer up some tips for my fellow travellers:

1. Don't use three words when you can use 10. The more you say, the more you know.
2. Yes, they know that their President was a bad choice. The country just voted in a Democratic landslide in the midterm elections. Just don't mention the war.
3. Popular opinion is best measured by which celebrity is in/out of favour that week.
4. Jumpers can be sweaters, but sweaters are not always jumpers.
Confused? So am I. Until I can order a tall, skinny, decaf, caramel latte without the Starbucks kid sniggering, I'm going to keep talking to a minimum. It might seem a high price to pay but if I wanted to bang a ewey, I would have moved to New Zealand.