basilisk wrote:
"diggerop" toobusy@themoment wrote in message
...

No problem at all. It's almost as if we are bilingual, with a
language we understand among ourselves, (almost with the makings of
a dialect,) which can prove confusing for others, along with
speaking straightforward English. (It really is dying out though
and I suspect, some of our unique Aussie character with it.)

Almost like my Scottish and Irish forebears, who spoke who spoke
good English but would lapse into a local dialect among family and
friends. I can still remember an occasion when I was very young and
I'd broken some ornament in my old Scottish grandmother's dining
room. I thought I was in for a tongue lashing or worse, but she
merely said 'Och laddie, dinnae fash yoursel" which loosley meant
"that's all right son, no need to be upset over it."

I had a visitor from Scotland by last Saturday, I think he must have
laid the dialect on thick just for my confusion and his amusement,
when it came down to business, I noticed most of the incomprehensible
bits dissappeared and we communicated just fine. I will say that I
enjoyed listening even if I couldn't make out a lot of the
references.

My widowed grandmother brought her four kids to the US from Edinburgh
during the depression. She worked in Chicago as a nurse and worked hard
to lose all trace of her "burr". After a few years she returned to visit
her sister in Ayr for two weeks, during which time she re-acquired her
accent fully and maintained it carefully for the next sixty-some years.

I have to laugh /with/ her. I was born in Georgia, and when I moved to
northern Indiana and started school, the kids made fun of how I "tawk'd"
and, according to my mother, it took less than week for me to lose all
trace of my drawl.

Fast forward to late fifties - I returned to to the Atlanta area to
spend a school Christmas vacation with the folks who'd been next door
neighbors when I'd been an ankle-biter. They'd set up blind dates for
every evening leading up to a big New Year's dance - for which I was
expected to ask one of the young ladies to accompany me (I felt like I'd
fallen into a time warp). First date told me I tawkt lahk a damnyankee
(lip curled). Second date remarked that I had a trace of yankee accent
and asked where I'd picked /that/ up (with an overtone suggesting that
perhaps penicillin might help). By the third evening I'd worked the bugs
out and everything went smoothly thereafter (I did invite a gorgeous
young belle to the dance and had a great time). Just before I returned
to school, my "improvement" was recognized with a certificate making me
an honorary colonel in the Confederate underground.

But for the life of me, I can't speak with a Scottish burr. :-]

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/