> Is it all right to call Ozzies "Australians"?
Finally, ww, an answer.
Yep.
One thing but, the average Auszie has trouble saying it. Tends to come out as "o-stray-yun" (short o as in clock). We have a similar problem with "millionaire"......comes out as "m-oo-yon-air".
> I think bikkie, chockie, footy, and dunny are twee"
You're missing the point behind the whole essence of the Auszie dialect. If a word is short, we lengthen it. If it's long, we shorten it. Both rules obey a higher rule - wherever possible, we put a vowel at the end of a word. This is especially prominent with names..
Martin becomes "Marto" if it's a surname, "Marty" if it's a first name.
Gilchrist becomes "Gilly".
My son Tim is "Timmy", "Timmo" or "Timbo".
My other son, Adam, is Ad or Addie.
It may sound twee, but I assure you that's not the intent. Strine is a very lazy dialect - we take whatever shortcuts are available and tend to ignore punctuation, hence jamming our words together. By adding a trailing vowel it becomes easier to run words together. Furthermore, it means that ones lips, tongue and palate don't have to work too hard during the speech process.
Years ago a popular brand of insect repellant exploited this by developing a "pseudo-word" that's still in use today. The tag to their advert was, "Remember the Aerogard - and avagoodwegend". As a further example whilst on an insect theme, we also say "mozzie" (mossie?) for mosquito and "blowie" for blow-fly (or blow fish - ie puffer fish - the scourge of the Swan River!).
stales
