Heaps and heaps of Aussie slang, I reckon.

I really love accents and regional slang. Ask anyone who knows me. So when I found out I was going to Australia I was so pumped because I really wanted to pick up on some slang of the land down under. Now, in the academic sense, there is little differentiation between American English and Australian English (besides a few spelling changes like 'color' to 'colour' and 'organization' to 'organisation'...speaking of I'm taking a globali(z/s)ation course here and had to write a paper on media globali(z/s)ation. I forgot to changes the Zs to Ss and got lots of red marks, oh well. Oh, one more thing, the letter Z isn't pronounced 'Zee', it's pronounced 'Zed'. How random is that?). However, some of the spoken Australian dialect can be hard to decipher, especially when they talk fast. Most of the language here seems to say 'just get on with it'. Aussies don't have time to muddle around with grammar or proper sentence structure, or even real words. Here's a quick run down of some typical words thrown out in an everyday conversation. I'll give them in a sentence too, like in a spelling bee.

Trolley: Shopping Cart "Little Billy, bring me a trolley so we can stock up on meat pies and Vegemite.'

Heaps: Tons or A lot "Oi! There's heaps of fun things to do in Perth."

Eh?, Yeah?, Hey?: Punctuation to almost any sentence "Homework sucks, hey?"

No worries: No Problem "No worries! We've got plenty of goon for this weekend!"

Goon: Boxed wine "This goon is eating away my stomach lining."

Ace!: Awesome! "This Vines concert is going to be so ace!"

Bloke: Man "Which is the men's bathroom?" "The one that says 'blokes'"

Tosser: Wanker "That (bleep)ing tosser just dumped his beer on me!"

Dobber: Tattle-tale "That stinking dobber told the lecturer I was cheating."

Knackered: Tired "After a night out in Freo all I want is a kebab and a warm bed cause I'm so knackered."

Cheers: Thank you "Nobody's every told me how much they like my smile, cheers."

Brick shit house: Badass Mo Fo "My friend walked into a biker bar and got his ass kicked by a total brick shit house."

Yonks and Yonks: Years and Years "It's been yonks and yonks since I watched a footy game."

Pom: British person "That anchor on the ABC doesn't sound Australian, he's a pom!"

Bogan: Aussie white trash "Kath and Kim is the epitome of bogan culture"

Good Onya: Job well done "You just finished your essay? Good onya!"

The overall shortening of words:

Cottesloe: Cott
Fremantle: Freo
Rottnest: Rotto
Thanks: Ta
Subiaco: Subi
University: Uni

Everyone has at least one nickname here as well. Sometimes two or three. It goes along with the whole shortening of names. Most of them end in 'zza' or the letter O. So like Jerome becomes 'Jezza' and Courtney becomes 'Courto'. Mine would be hard since my name is already one syllable, plus Luko just sounds weird.

So try and use some of these words in your everyday speech and see if anyone notices. If they do try and pull off an Aussie accent and call them 'mate'. If that doesn't work, just walk away.