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Post by mickthecactus on Feb 11, 2019 13:51:48 GMT
I'm fascinated by the term "hard yakka".
Tell us more lovely young questa!
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Post by questa on Feb 12, 2019 11:04:29 GMT
I couldn't find the lovely young Q so the crone will have to do.
Hard yakka means above usual hard physical work, usually in rural and remote areas, however the recent floods and fires will have resulted in the "Townies" having to get stuck into some hard yakka to clean up and repair.
I am sure I heard that the word yakka was of Aboriginal and colonial Australian origins. It was used by the Indigenous people who were puzzled by the work ethic of the miners on the goldfields.The word easily slipped into the Oz lexicon.
Wiki and slang sites have suggested that it comes from the plant called Yacca or Grass Tree. Their reason given is that the Yacca tree is hard to cut, therefore giving rise to hard yacca. Definitely city boy stuff! The "tree" is so easy to cut with a household saw that many get vandalised. The spelling is coincidental and the wiki entry not validated.
Years ago a company making tough work clothes for heavy duty action registered "Hard Yakka" for the brand...now make everything for tradies. They say yakka is Aboriginal for "work".
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Post by mickthecactus on Feb 12, 2019 12:16:38 GMT
I thought it referred to talking. Got it off Alf on Home and Away.
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Post by breeze on Feb 12, 2019 13:08:16 GMT
Yesterday I was watching an old Monty Don program where Monty was helping out a couple with their garden. The husband was Australian and used the word "yakka." I kind of figured it out from the context, but it's so easy for me to be confident and dead wrong at the same time.
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Post by questa on Feb 12, 2019 13:11:23 GMT
no no no, To yak is to have a friendly chat. 'They were yakking about the cricket when the teacher said "Stop the yak and get on with your work "Sally is very quiet lately, I'll have a bit of a yak with her and see if she is OK"
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 12, 2019 13:36:23 GMT
My knowledge of Australian English improved a bit by watching the first three seasons of Rake. But I'm pretty sure that I learned more by reading several books by Helen Garner, since it is always better to see the words written down. I also read two or three Australian crime novels, but I forgot who wrote them. I'll come across them in my flat some day.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 12, 2019 23:50:11 GMT
it's so easy for me to be confident and dead wrong at the same time. How I love you, Breeze! (& thanks for just describing my life) |
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Post by patricklondon on Feb 16, 2019 6:22:04 GMT
I've heard a few colourful expressions from Australia in my time, though I suspect the most technicolour were comic inventions by Barry Humphries. I like the image of "shoot through like a Bondi tram" (having once seen the slope of the hill down to Bondi, I wonder if a tram ever lost its brakes there). I do know that, if you're trying to find something, it's best not to say to an Australian that you've been rooting around in your drawers. My blog | My photos | My video clips | My Librivox recordings"too literate to be spam" |
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Post by questa on Feb 16, 2019 9:12:11 GMT
Nah, Patrick, go on and say it...we could do with a good laugh lately. Our pollies are a bunch of mugs who wouldn't know their arses from their cakeholes. The banks...well we had them all sussed for years, thieving crooked bastards. Me mate lost his old man's farm, one of the soldier-settler's blocks. Worked harder than a cockie's dog he did, but the banks can't make it rain, so they bolted his gate. And then the bloody rains came and kept on coming. Half a million cattle dead and the townies pretty well wiped out.Those rodents of the press showed up, dressed up like pox-doctors clerks, stuck their mugs into cameras, bleated a bit then it's off to the next bugger-up This turned out to be a bushie in Tasmania...been going on for six bloody months and still outta control. So much for the forests that were growing a thousand years back. The ankle-biters will grow up to a pretty crook country unless we get off our bums and get some decent sods in Canberra, throw the bank bosses in the clink and chuck away the key, look after our mates on the land, make the journos write the truth and us do a better bloody job at looking out for the country than we are. But we know the Poms are rooting for us.  |
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Post by mickthecactus on Feb 16, 2019 12:23:38 GMT
Brilliant!
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Post by lagatta on Feb 17, 2019 13:32:36 GMT
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Post by questa on Feb 18, 2019 8:36:45 GMT
That basic site is one of my top 3 time-wasting places..."just check something quickly" turns into, "OMG where did those hours go?"
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 18, 2019 16:01:41 GMT
When I first read Monkey Grip by Helen Garner, I was already confounded by the word 'dunny' even though the meaning was immediately obvious. Questa, do you know how this term originated?
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Post by questa on Feb 18, 2019 22:41:45 GMT
It comes from the Scottish word 'dun' which was a stone-built fort that offered protection to the cluster of houses that gradually became a village, a town then a city. The word shows up in many place names today...Dunedin, Dunkirk or Verdun.
The early settlers used the word ironically as the 'duns' were very primitive. As with many words used in Australia it soon had 'y' or 'ies' added. and became the vulgar 'dunny'.
And it is true about checking for spiders under the seat in the suburbs or bush.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 19, 2019 5:15:39 GMT
I was so pleased today when I recognized an Aussie word because I'd read about it on Anyport. In some other thread Questa pointed out that in Australia you don't want to say that you're rooting for someone (in the sense of wishing them success), as it has an entirely different meaning where she's from. Today, in an episode of Rosehaven, which takes place in Tasmania, a man is insulted by being called a "rat rooter". Just a few days ago I would have been completely mystified by that.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 19, 2019 6:40:27 GMT
I would imagine that there may be a connection to the word "rut" and became deformed in pronunciation.
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Post by questa on Feb 19, 2019 7:44:28 GMT
Many and varied are the puns and uses of "root". We have a small mammal called a bandicoot which forages in the bush eating the litter under trees etc. The name is also given to a bloke in a relationship which seems to be going nowhere.
"Why do you call him Bandicoot?" "Because he eats roots and leaves"
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 19, 2019 7:49:13 GMT
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Post by lagatta on Feb 19, 2019 13:58:31 GMT
Aussie version of "Eats shoots and leaves"?
Many of us have met that guy.
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Post by patricklondon on Feb 20, 2019 6:23:35 GMT
As with many words used in Australia it soon had 'y' or 'ies' added. and became the vulgar 'dunny'. Am I right in thinking (or is this another Barry Humphries invention) that there was a graphic curse "I hope your chooks turn to emus and kick your dunny down"..? |
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Post by questa on Feb 20, 2019 7:27:03 GMT
It is dinkum, (real, honest). Except you have to use 'into' not 'to' to get the majestic rhythm of the curse. A chook is an adult chicken, so named after the farmer's call "chook, chook, chook when throwing food to them.
When the emu curse is used it is often followed by the riposte
"And may the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits"
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Post by mickthecactus on Feb 20, 2019 7:37:58 GMT
Wasn't that in Carry on up the Khyber? I'm sure I can see Bernie Bresslaw saying it.
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Post by mossie on Feb 20, 2019 8:08:00 GMT
Perhaps not as bad as “May your bollocks fester, and drop off”
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Post by questa on Feb 20, 2019 13:58:18 GMT
I agree, Mick. It doesn't have a true Aussie ring to it, however it has still been adopted by the less couth of our bogans.
I like the sentiment of mossie's curse, but 'bollocks' is SO British. I guess they would use 'balls'' or 'goolies' or one of the plethora of such words.
Were there any words in my original rant that anyone wanted clarified (reply #8)?
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 20, 2019 16:03:24 GMT
I thought you all used a different word for those people.  |
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Post by patricklondon on Feb 20, 2019 17:49:34 GMT
Were there any words in my original rant that anyone wanted clarified (reply #8)? Not quite sure who or what a cockie is? I'm guessing someone agricultural who keeps a working dog. (Some of the other phrases are not unfamiliar in the UK too). My blog | My photos | My video clips | My Librivox recordings"too literate to be spam" |
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Post by questa on Feb 22, 2019 8:54:36 GMT
Bixa...Do you mean when we call the Pommy Bastards, Pommy Bastards? I have heard that many of them like being called a Pommy Bastard because they know they are at last accepted into the "In Group". The name is 99% friendly, but if it is said as "You Pommy Bastard" in a drawn out drawl ending on a low note "you better run, you better take cover, yeah"
Patrick...A cow cockie or sheep cockie is a farmer who runs the farm with only immediate family to help...and his amazing dog who is worth 3 farm-workers.
Back in the past, the families only had stores deliveries infrequently, and sugar didn't travel well. Tins of Golden Syrup took the place of sugar. The name "Cockie's Joy" has been argued over. Some say it was the tin of syrup that was C J while my family said it was a mixture of syrup and butter to form a sweet paste that earned the Joy label.
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Post by questa on Feb 22, 2019 9:03:27 GMT
I would love to hear of the different expressions from other English-speaking regions. I watch 'Vera'and love her dialect, Pet, but when I tried ' Dalzeill (sp) and Pascoe'I couldn't understand a word.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 22, 2019 14:03:09 GMT
My stepfather being a US Navy man and having spent time in all of the oceans of the world, including the ones surrounding Australia, he said that calling the Brits limeys often started fights in bars. Frankly, I doubt if it is the word limey itself that started fights but the tone in which it was said (and quite often followed by the word bastard, too, I'm pretty sure).
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Feb 22, 2019 16:38:37 GMT
2 of my nieces live in Melbourne. They were raised in New Zealand but moved to Australia when the eldest one married an Ausie in the 90s. My nephew-in-law sometimes comes out with a phrases I need him to explain to me...one word that we've adopted is 'pokies' which is what he calls slot machines...not that we are gamblers or anything and only ever indulge on cruise ships for some reason...
I don't know whether it's their New Zealand upbringing but both girls use 'earthy language' all the time, peppering their sentences with swear words...somehow it doesn't sound offensive with an antipodean accent!? I certainly picked up their use of naughty words when they came to live in the UK for 3 years back in the 90s. Thing is, Julia (52) is an accountant and Rachel (50) a management consultant of some kind so it's not as if they're working in a fish market! I certainly wouldn't use that sort of language at work or in front of people I don't know...or my Dad...gosh...
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