Language

I've already dropped the ball on my grand plan to post once a day about Australia and its funny little customs. I got a little bit lazy. I'm sorry.

One of the fears of going to live in a foreign country is the language barrier. Not knowing the language of the place you are going to spend a year or more of your life can be challenging.

Fortunately for me, that was not the case. But there has been a lot of lessons about what Aussie's say. They use 'the Queen's English' as one of my co-workers put it. Certain phrases that I've picked up, such as 'no worries', 'no dramas', using hey or eh as an interjection, and much more. It's been an interesting view of their culture - both listening to the words they say and what different things mean. The bathroom is the 'toilet', 'washroom', 'loo'; all very British-esque. I am aware that isn't a word.

Becoming aware of my accent was another interesting aspect of language. Because we (Americans) are usually used to hearing the same twang, it doesn't really hit us that we have an accent. I like to joke and say that I don't have one - well I really don't. A taxi driver from Kuristan told me that I have a 'beautiful' accent one time. I was flattered, but still didn't give him an extra tip.

I'm not particularly sick of the Australian accent. I wouldn't say that I can emulate it very well either - although it would be fun to come back to the US and pretend that's how I speak. It would be funny.

The flip side to the language experience has been the number of people who are fluent in two languages (or more). I am jealous. I have friends who speak, aside from English, Russian, Spanish, German, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese, Hindi, and many more. No, it's not just one person, but different people who speak these languages aside from their native tongue. It fuels my desire to live overseas in a foreign country, speaking a language I don't know. It's going to be hard, but I will do it. Hopefully.