A suburban street somewhere in South Australia
‘Correct me if I am wrong.’ This is what a reviewer mentioned in her sparse review of one of my books - that ‘Australians don’t talk like this.’ No specifics, just in general. I don’t know how she thinks Australians speak.
Although I would love to correct her, for she is, of course, wrong, I know I would cause a storm if I did. I would also like to ask her if she is aware that I am Australian? And does she imagine I use a fake voice when I write? Why The Face? Or, in Victorian, in which she thinks I speak, Worse Than France.
Then I could tell her that quite a few people can understand me when I talk to them; taxi drivers, shop assistants, friends and relatives, and even strangers from faraway lands. I have never resorted to ‘struth, ‘stone the crows’, or ‘fair crack of the whip.’ I say 'tch', or ‘I am surprised’, or ‘be fair.’ I speak in what I think are normal sentences, often using different tones. Sometimes I am earnest, sometimes I am cross, annoyed, impatient, or laughing, and yet my words still erupt like the words of a person anywhere else in the world.
I don’t know what she meant. Did she mean people don’t speak so frankly? Of course they do, from every country in the world.
Or did she mean I didn’t have my characters speaking ocker, dropping g’s or h’s? Should I tell her that possibly she has assumed that everyone is Crocodile Dundee or Steve Irwin, or must to play up the stereotype? Is that what she expected? That normal, well educated people in Australia speak like crocodile hunters in the outback – and when I lived in North Queensland I knew a crocodile hunter (he was a local who didn’t like the crocs taking his cattle – and he had broad country accent. He ended his sentence with ‘ay?’ We don’t do that in South Australia, which is where my stories are set, every one of them so far.
Or should I give her a history lesson? Dear reviewer, South Australia is the only state in Australia that wasn’t settled by convicts. Our settlers came as free people to a new land. The first were the discoverers, the movers and shakers, and then the less well off who were needed to form a rounded society, to dig ditches, to build houses, to grow crops and to farm. Along with them came minor aristocracy, fortune hunters, and sons and daughters of wealthy families.
Then came wave after wave of people with or without money, each needing the other. Our first houses were not built in enclaves of the wealthy, leaving the poor to their own districts. The wealthy needed the poor as much as vice versa. Small cottages were built beside mansions. Land was bought and settled, mined, and crops were grown. Dear Reviewer, read my historicals to get an idea of how South Australia was formed and then accept that we are normal people who speak the same English as everyone else.
Dear reviewer, do you really think Australia is not like every other country?
Although I would love to correct her, for she is, of course, wrong, I know I would cause a storm if I did. I would also like to ask her if she is aware that I am Australian? And does she imagine I use a fake voice when I write? Why The Face? Or, in Victorian, in which she thinks I speak, Worse Than France.
Then I could tell her that quite a few people can understand me when I talk to them; taxi drivers, shop assistants, friends and relatives, and even strangers from faraway lands. I have never resorted to ‘struth, ‘stone the crows’, or ‘fair crack of the whip.’ I say 'tch', or ‘I am surprised’, or ‘be fair.’ I speak in what I think are normal sentences, often using different tones. Sometimes I am earnest, sometimes I am cross, annoyed, impatient, or laughing, and yet my words still erupt like the words of a person anywhere else in the world.
I don’t know what she meant. Did she mean people don’t speak so frankly? Of course they do, from every country in the world.
Or did she mean I didn’t have my characters speaking ocker, dropping g’s or h’s? Should I tell her that possibly she has assumed that everyone is Crocodile Dundee or Steve Irwin, or must to play up the stereotype? Is that what she expected? That normal, well educated people in Australia speak like crocodile hunters in the outback – and when I lived in North Queensland I knew a crocodile hunter (he was a local who didn’t like the crocs taking his cattle – and he had broad country accent. He ended his sentence with ‘ay?’ We don’t do that in South Australia, which is where my stories are set, every one of them so far.
Or should I give her a history lesson? Dear reviewer, South Australia is the only state in Australia that wasn’t settled by convicts. Our settlers came as free people to a new land. The first were the discoverers, the movers and shakers, and then the less well off who were needed to form a rounded society, to dig ditches, to build houses, to grow crops and to farm. Along with them came minor aristocracy, fortune hunters, and sons and daughters of wealthy families.
Then came wave after wave of people with or without money, each needing the other. Our first houses were not built in enclaves of the wealthy, leaving the poor to their own districts. The wealthy needed the poor as much as vice versa. Small cottages were built beside mansions. Land was bought and settled, mined, and crops were grown. Dear Reviewer, read my historicals to get an idea of how South Australia was formed and then accept that we are normal people who speak the same English as everyone else.
Dear reviewer, do you really think Australia is not like every other country?
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