*Disclaimer * These observations are purely things I noticed after wandering Australia for 5 weeks and may not be entirely accurate. If you have any explanations or stories, please share away.
Also, to prove we’re not (too) biased I’ll be doing a list of US observations after our cross-country drive in September!
13. Crickey! Strange grammatical differences.
On top of the abbreviations, there are also some strange grammatical differences between Australian English and other forms of English, and while “G’day Mate” appears to be fading in popularity, I found “How ya going?” to be equally charming.
14. Australian-ifications of foreign words.
To make things even more complicated for the ambling North American visitor, many of the ways in which Australian English speakers pronounce foreign words is confusingly different. The Spanish dish “paella?” Pie-el-ah. The French meat cut “fillet?” Fill-it. The Korean car “Hyundai?” He-un-day.
15. There are tons of candy stores.
There seems to be even more of a penchant for sweets than back in the States. I was particularly surprised to see row upon rows of Willy Wonka sweets lining the shelves of every convenience store.
16. There are very few options for food customization.
Maybe they size up customers as they enter the door, or maybe because they make such damned good food. Either way, I was surprised at how little food customization there was. Whenever we ate at a Thai or Indian restaurant we were never asked how spicy we wanted our food. Similarly, no one asked us how we wanted our meat cooked.
17. There are animals everywhere.
Australian animals have almost no natural predators, except for the dingo, and foxes which were brought over by the British. As such, there are TONS of animals once you get outside of the city, and tons of road kill – especially in less populated places like Tasmania.