When I found out I'd be spending a month accompanying two Australians around Japan, I thought, "Easy -- we speak the same language." Bloody wrong! "Aussie English" is completely different from the English used on my planet, the United States.

Australian English has an errant "r," which can be added or discarded at will. "R" can be added to select words ending in vowels, such that "America" becomes "Ameriker" and a "koala" becomes a "koaler." If you are a cartoonist, you're good at "drawring." Discarding the "r" is just as rampant, as seen in the favorite Australian slang term, "bugger!" (correctly pronounced "bugga!"), a term that transcends all parts of speech but is most often used to express surprise when something doesn't turn out as one thought it would.

Words with three or more syllables can freely be slimmed down to two, usually by adding a "y" or "ie" at the end of the word. Thus the word "Australian" is trimmed to "Aussie" (pronounced "Ozzie"). Long, cumbersome nouns will find nowhere to hide in Aussie English: a chocolate is a "chockie" and a mosquito is what else but a "mozzie"? The word "barbecue" is entirely too burdensome with three syllables, thus any good Australian would put steaks on the "barbie" instead. Bugger that in the U.S., though, because if you put steaks on a Barbie, you'll have a sexual harassment case.