AUSTRALIANS LEARNING TO BE AMERICANS: Why? It's not as though there'd be a Green Card in it.

The infamous Australian cultural cringe has never faded. On the contrary, it is now more virulent than ever in spite of our flag waving proclamations of rugged independence and uniqueness. The irony is that, in our slavish desire to emulate Americans, it is our uniqueness that is being jettisoned with the energy of men trying to save a ship by lightening the load. Our language, our dress, our customs take on an ever increasing American flavour. Our teenagers wear baseball caps backwards and favour the exposed underpants look. Look at me - I'm wearing Calvin Klein! This though is an admittedly marginal improvement on the exposed posterior cleavage. Both these 'fashion statements' have their origins in newly released American Negro prisoners having acquired a taste for the look caused by being deprived of belts.

Our sportsmen clasp their hands to their hearts during the playing of the national anthem apparently not realising that this is merely an American custom not required anywhere else. Our children trick-or-treat at Halloween. (As was recently asked in a letter to the editor, how long will it be before we are celebrating Thanksgiving?)

But is in our changing speech that our collective, deep-seated feeling of inferiority is most noticeably on show. It is perhaps understandable that the unrelenting American cultural imperialism channeled through the media of television and film exerts a powerful influence. This influence would be nowhere near as potent though if it met even the modicum of resistance that should be inherent in any measure of true national pride. In other countries where the influence has been just as strong, France for example, a resistance, when found to be wanting has been deliberately manufactured. Here in contrast, there is no resistance because there is no desire to be protected from being alienated from our own distinctive character. This could only be if it is felt to be inferior. Who would want to continue being second class when the opportunity is available to trade up to something of much higher quality which apparently all things American are.

Here is a summary of the changes from Australian to American that have occurred in our speech over the last several decades:

Centuries ago, the English, Dutch and German languages, underwent was to become known as the Great Vowel Shift. This happened swiftly but the cause is largely mystery. Similarly, Australian English about twenty years ago underwent what might be termed the Great Stress Shift. This also happened swiftly but its cause is no mystery at all; it conformed with the American way of placing stress on certain words. Consider the word that used to be pronounced as ReSEARCH. It is now pronounced REsearch. This happened virtually overnight along with rePEAT becoming REpeat, implying that you peat it once and then peat it again. Asinine? No, just the American way. Similarly, we now have CIGarette where we once had cigaRETTE and WEEKend when we once enjoyed a weekEND.

“ ‘ow ya goin?’” (owyagoinmateallright? in 'Strine) was once as Australian as the cork-dangling hats which you now only see tourists wearing around The Rocks in Sydney. This is rapidly being replaced with “how ya doin?’” For extra US flavour it is sometimes heard with the addition of “buddy”. “How ya doin’ buddy?” When asked if he’d perhaps like a cup of tea or a beer, an Australian, if indeed he would welcome a beverage, would normally respond with “yes please”, or some such variation, but now, in order to get with the programme (now often spelt in, you guessed it, the Americanised ‘program’) he will respond with “sure” as in perhaps meaning “of course I want a beer. Don’t buggerize around by asking me – just get it.” It is gratifying to note that “sure” is still pronounced jarringly as “shore” and not in the more phonetic American way – but give it time.


“Bloke”. It began life amongst the English working class but was transported seamlessly into Australian English, albeit enjoying far greater popularity at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum, where it happily resided for a couple of centuries. But not any more. It has been hip-bumped by “guy”, of course another Americanism. “Guy” was once as masculine as “bloke” but somewhere along its lexical meandering it was enlarged to include (become inclusive of) women (as well as even children, as in “you guys”); that is, in certain circumstances. If for example a woman was addressing a group of female friends it would be allowable to say, “OK guys …”. On the other hand, the same woman addressing her husband and alluding to the group of girl-friends formerly referred to, she would not be able to say, “I’m going out with the guys”. This would be an egregious transgression as this term in this context is still firmly corralled within the male domain. Similarly when “guy” is matched with “this” or “that” as in “this guy” or “that guy”, it would be clearly understood that the guy in question would be a man.

These nuances have been clearly understood and abided by in the ousting of “bloke” by “guy”. After all, if there is anything we Australians are authorities on it is American television which after all is the oracle beaming twenty four hour a day instruction on all things American. “Guy”, also it has apparently been found provides a greater service than simply adding to an American disguise. It is classless, and as such can be used by anybody. Whereas, let’s face it, “bloke” is decidedly down-market, even (dare we say it) working class, when the working class is supposed to have been bourgeoisified out of existence. It is almost as down in the gutter as “sheila” which could never be used in polite company. Try to imagine an Australian cricket captain, or captain of the Wallabies (maybe not the Kangaroos who persistently find the socio-economic elevator out of order) saying something like, “the blokes performed brilliantly today”. No, the effect would be akin to several million people sucking several million lemons. Or for an even greater degree of difficulty, try to imagine a young mother saying to a group of mixed sex children, “hurry up you blokes”. You obviously see what's being got at here.

Some of the even sillier Americanisms lapped up here in Australia: In the US it makes traditional good sense to nominate any given summer as the year in which it falls: for example, in the summer of '42 … Obviously, as the Northern summer occurs mid year, there is precision in this. It however does not appear to deter a growing number of Australians from following this practice even though the Australian summer straddles two years. Ergo, this can only result in confusion rather than precision. Curiously, it would work with winters but one never hears phrases such as “in the winter of ….”

Neither does it appear to deter a great many Australians who had the immense good fortune to be the inheritors of the richest, most precise language ever devised from aping a people who neither seem to know or care about the exquisite intricacies of a language they see as their own to do with as they will. Less educated Americans even call the language they speak “American”.

But no matter the extent of the violation, if it’s American it must be inherently superior to Australian. It must be cool. Case in point: for centuries, speakers of English availed themselves of perfectly good phrases denoting ‘desire for a certain action or object’. These included ‘wanting’, ‘intending to …’, ‘desiring to …’, ‘trying to’, ‘thinking about …’ etc. All beautifully precise. But these have all been scrapped in favour of the all purpose ‘looking to …’. Looking to? What pray tell, would that mean to the uninitiated, such as an Australian English teacher of a bygone era. If the phrase had managed to find its way into a high school essay of that time the said essay would have been unceremoniously returned along with the advice to learn some elementary English. Now however it figures prominently in the speech of ABC TV newsreaders.

It seems that to many Americans,(and not a few Australians) grammar is a somewhat intimidating esoteric mystery. Recent evidence of this is the doubling of the verb to be as in, for example, ‘being that he is here now …’. This is the type of imported lingual toxic waste that we hear spewing increasingly from our television sets. One would assume that it jars on Australian ears. Perhaps it does … initially. But this still doesn’t prevent a certain type of Australian from seeing a wave that he would like to be riding. It’s American. It must be cool.

Can it possibly get any more asinine? You bet. Try this on for size: momentarily. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the following definition: 'a. Lasting only a moment; short-lived, transitory …' A significant number of the speakers of American English though have now given to this word the meaning of in a moment. For example, I will be with you momentarily. One who’s less attuned to the whims of these destroyers of language could be forgiven for mistaking this to mean, 'I will be with you for a very short time and then, PUFF; I’ll be gone like a magician’s rabbit'. Even the better educated Americans recognize this for the product of stupidity that it is. But that doesn’t prevent dedicated Australian followers of verbal fashion taking a liking to this stupidity.

One is reminded here of the sentiment expressed at the Mad Hatter’s tea party that words mean whatever the speaker wants them to mean. This no doubt is marvelously convenient to the lingually slothful. It does however tend to defeat the purpose of language which after all is to allow human beings to communicate. It can of course be validly argued that language is never static, carved in granite as it were. Rather, it is more like a living, breathing organism and like anything else that lives is constantly changing. This though implies a gentle, natural evolution, something entirely different from the brutal American assault on English so avidly watched and emulated by Australians. Rather than reflecting a love of the language, the destruction wrought on it by Americans seems almost to be fueled by hatred.

Take the phenomenon of the neologism. This is one of the main instruments of change to a growing language – the building blocks as it were. Shakespeare alone invented hundreds of them, thereby immensely enriching English. It should be noted however, that the new words invented by Shakespeare and others were to give expression to meanings for which none existed. American neologisms, by contrast, simply re-invent the wheel. For just about every new word somehow shanghaied into the language by Americans, a perfectly good word already existed. A few examples: construct (construction), gifted (given), self-destruct (self-destroy). Similarly, Americans seem to have little patience with nouns that cannot be immediately converted into one word verb equivalents, so we then have, for example, birth becoming the atrocious birthing, and surveillance becoming surveil. (Not even an American spell-checker likes this last one.) Changing tenses can also be tricky for Americans. This is the reason to plead, in the past tense, becomes pled.

This would be all well and good if we still had, as we once did, a division between American and Australian English as solid as the Berlin wall. This more than likely was what protected us when Americans decided to ‘modernise’ spelling. It would be interesting to see the result if this had have been postponed to the age of rampant American cultural imperialism. One suspects that if so, our spelling would have fallen into line like recruits at an army barracks. There seems to be no rational explanation for our immediately adopting every American lingual absurdity that happens along as if it was inscribed on tablets delivered from a mountain top.

The only explanation would appear to be a deep-seated, collective inferiority complex. We fear our own originality and are unable to see it having authenticity. It is a mark of our pitifulness that in an age when we are so overwhelmed by America, the only verbal trend to have actually originated here is the rising inflexion that leaves a question-mark dangling at the end of most sentences. It had its genesis among our women folk, spread Ebola-like and infected a proportion of our more easily led males. It can be so teeth-grindingly irritating that one wonders if we would gladly accept every American wound inflicted on the language if only they would take this monstrosity off our hands in return.

All of the above is a classical illustration of the herd-instinct. With this inability to think as individuals and be individuals, we are sheep – lambs being led to the slaughter. Our masters salivate and rub their hands together with glee at the thought of just how ridiculously easy it is to corral us and herd us in the direction of our destiny as it has been decreed by them.