Homework WE 11/4/16 - Lost for Words

[Shelley Hansen]

Love this week's prompts, Maureen! So many ideas spring to mind - but I've settled on my old hobby-horse of our vanishing colourful Australian lingo (a subject previously discussed on this forum more than once!)

Lost for Words
(c) Shelley Hansen 1/4/16

The good old Aussie lingo that we knew when we were kids
is being overtaken. Yep! I’m sure it’s on the skids.
We’re following the trend – but have we stopped to count the cost
when we awake to find our spoken heritage is lost?

These sayings, rich with colour, would escape my mother’s mouth –
like - don’t look now my girlie, but it’s snowing way down south!
That woman’s mutton dressed as lamb! That fur and feathers fright
is flasher than a gold tooth on a rat – a dreadful sight!

Well, look at what the cat dragged in (she’d say if we were late),
you’d better throw your hat in first, before you shut the gate.
Don’t sit there like a shag upon a rock – there’s work to do -
intelligence is on the house (if we expressed our view).

We’ve got the sulky – where’s the horse? (to those inclined to pout),
you’re like a fiddler’s elbow (if we wandered in and out).
That gale will blow the dog right off his chain – the strength of it!
Untidy locks were said to be a birch broom in a fit!

Our parents’ speech was epic – from a time when Mum would wear
her April Nights in Paris perfume, curlers in her hair.
When common sense was served with meat and veg and homemade sweets,
and garden birds (not people) were the ones who uttered tweets.

But now we’ve been besieged by OMG and LOL
and everything that’s mildly good is awesome, sick as well!
The F word soils the mouths of kids as young as three or four -
in our day swearing left us tasting soap forever more!

Of course we must have progress, and our languages do change,
but all that I can think of to describe this speech is … strange!
Vocabulary is reduced, its meaning – for the birds!
I think of what we had ... and stone the crows! I’m lost for words!

[Maureen K Clifford]

Bloody brilliant Shelley - Struth! That's a ripper

I totally agree with you about our language - text speak is totally lacklustre and meaningless, it has none of the colour or originality that made our Australian language - although country folks seem to retain it better than city people who appear to be all geared up to become American clones admiring Trumpisms . Good to see the two young country blokes on MKR coming out with some ripper expressions...what is strange is that the producers find their language strange...it is not strange at all, it is 'stralyan .