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reason for this is that we have great weather for most of the year and wish to get the mundane things like speech and communication (and work for that matter) over and done with so that we can get on with the real business of living. Australians spend significant parts of their day outside. Why? Because we can. Tonnes of sunshine, great beaches, endless sport, bucket loads of scenery. So why not?

As a consequence of our great love of the outdoors, Aussie (pronounced Ozzie, not Ossie - the later is asking for trouble) English takes a bit of getting used to. The standard greeting tends to be "G'day", "Ow's it go-en?", or even "Ow are ya?". They all basically mean 'hello' and the traditional response to the latter two is "Good, and yerself?". It is considered bad form to actually be honest and say so if you are feeling anything but good. It is a token pleasantry and I guess you should really consider these to be rhetorical questions. After all, you are in God's country so life is by definition good. Anything less than this is unacceptable and doesn't even enter into the discussion. It's also likely to end any discussion rather quickly, be greeted with stunned silence or a muttered use of one of the labels I mentioned above. Despite our general antipathy towards our English forebears, which really comes into its own on the sporting field, we are rather protective about the British spellings of things.

We do have a bad habit of dropping off the 'g' in any word ending in 'ing', sometimes dropping use of the word 'the' altogether in sentences, and racing straight into words, somehow forgetting that there are consonants at the start of them. I've given you a couple of examples above, however the most common one is 'going to' or 'going to the'. This becomes "gunna", so the question 'Are you going to the beach?' becomes simply "Gunna beach?" The tendency to drop letters can happen with just about every word. The days of the week are spoken as if there is no 'a' - Mondy, Tuesdy etc, which doesn't extend to 'today', where we decide to be a little different and drop a different letter, becoming "t'day", while 'tomorrow' is "tomurra". 'Morning' becomes 'mornin', although 'good morning' is often either a "G'day" or still just "mornin" with an inflexion at the end so it is like a question. Confused? Just enjoy the sunshine and let the words sink in. A few beers also tends to help with the translation.

'Afternoon' becomes "arvo" and this extends into the Australian way of naming

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