quicko: pajamas

Evidently the American pronunciation is "also" the Australian one.  (I was congratulated on saying "pajamas" with an Australian accent ... only to discover what the Australian considered to be an American accent for it was ... a non-existent word.)

quicko: consume

Or, to Australians, conshume.

quicko: gaffer tape

I was for years under the mistaken notion that Australians had this wonderful, marvelous substance known as "gaffa" tape ... until recently the penny dropped and I realized it was exactly the same wonderful, marvelous substance I knew as "gaffer" tape.  Should have seen it coming by now, I know, but ... umm ... in my defense, I really never use it, I just hear theatre people talk about it.  It was duct tape my brother made a shirt out of.  That I'd be way more up on ... maybe.

quicko: puma

Just utterly mispronounced here.  Along the lines of p-YOU-muh instead of p-oooh-ma.

quicko: jaguar

Somehow acquires three-ish syllables in Australia instead of two ...

quicko: vietnam

Pronounced Viet-naam here instead of Viet-nahm.  Sigh.  There's also a slight something about "Samoa," but I can't quite work out what it is.  It sounds slightly funny, but possibly more correct ... which is more than I can say for "Vietnaam."

quicko: o come, o come emmanuel

And ransom captive Israel -- Americans say "Is-rye-el"; Australians say "Is-ray-el."  Roughly.

quicko: abba

Aaaah! (you scared me!)-BBA, say the Australians.  Aahhhh (you ARE right)-BBA, say the Americans.

I'm sure there's a more linguistically savvy way to put that, but, well, I'm not quite a linguistic and neither are most of you, so even if someone told you which sounds they were on that funny little chart no one can read but they insist on using in dictionaries, it really wouldn't do many of us much good.  So there.

quicko: hide and go R

It shouldn't really be a surprise in English, but the R is a particular tell-tale letter in terms of where you learned to speak.  As in, do you use Rs or not?  Do you add extra ones before vowels, just because?  Australians do.  (For example, we stand in "awe-R" of God.)  But then sometimes they disappear in other places.  It's all very complicated.  And goodness, that's to say nothing of the mighty O!

quicko: jaws open more? less?

I seem to be told both of these are true of Americans' pronunciation, on a variety of occasions.  Your call.

quicko: peony

Very odd pronunciation here.  Either than or one odd Australian who doesn't know how to pronounce it.  Can't actually remember who I heard it from; please don't take offense if it was you.

quicko: (gross alert)

Urine.  Pronounced "ur-in" (with a short i) in America, but "ur-ine" (with a long i) in Australia.

quicko: renaissance

Pronounced very hoighty-toighty here ...

quicko: strine

Australian slang for Australian slang.

quicko: here

This is just one I've been noticing a lot lately:  here.  The pronunciation is just so very Australian -- every time I hear (ha) it, I think, "wow, you're Australian!"

quicko: internship

One of my pet pronunciation peeves here.  Intern-ship, not in-tern-ship.  Or something like that.  Can't stand it here!

quicko: los angeles

Wow.  Talk about a shocker.  (Which sounds, oddly, Australian in and of itself.)  Have you heard an Australian (or a Brit, for that matter) say "Los Angeles"?  I don't care if you've never studied Spanish, you can't possibly butcher it as amazingly as they do.

quicko: tortillas

This one gets me every time:  Australians, unless they've studied Spanish (and even sometimes if they have), will pronounce "tortilla" at face value.

Now I am not remotely an expert on the Spanish language, but at the very least I know that "ll" is supposed to be more along the lines of a "y."

Australians, take note!

divided by a common you-know-what

There’s just way too much linguistic intrigue here not to mention some of it. Obviously you’ve got the accent. It’s closer to British than American, but it’s definitely its own entity and colors everything you hear. A few particular oddities in terms of pronunciation: cafe, aluminum, weekend, massage, fillet, ballet, Isaiah, oregano and, of all things, pronunciation. Not sure who’s responsible for that.

Spelling, of course, is also obvious to the linguist in the midst, and, again, generally follows British English, what with its excessive u and omnipresent s for z, which, incidentally, they call "zed." Imagine that – they’re actually so fond of the letter they name it. Whoever said Australians weren’t adorable?

If Austalians can’t think of a creative enough way to spell a word, they have an ingenious solution: change it. Thus, we get tons of new vocabulary words, such as star jumps for jumping jacks, lollies for candy, sticking plasters for Band-Aids, sheila for girl and thongs for flip flops.

Shortening words is also a national pastime, ranking somewhere shy of beer, but perhaps a bit above rugby. Generally it’s just nouns that bite the linguistic dust, getting either an –ie (brekkie. mozzies, Woolie’s, sunnies), an –o (arvo, journo, muso, doco, veggo), –er (swimmers, boarders, Mackers) or sometimes something completely random (brolly, trakkie daks).

There’s also phrases that are distinctly Australian and may or may not have direct American translations. "G’day," for instance, is like hello, but not exactly. You’ll understand it, but be completely unable to reproduce it.

I’ve had slightly better luck with the omnipresent "how ya going?" Using the verb "go" with the reckless abandon Australians do had never crossed my mind, but after a few months I’m finding that it really does roll off the tongue a bit more eptly than you’d think. Try it yourself and tell me how you go.

Then there’s "to sus out," as in to find something out, like if he/she/it is good/bad/ugly. I’ve heard it called a derivative of "to source out," which was supposed to explain things to me, but being as I’d never heard of sourcing (or is it sourceing?) anything either, that didn’t really help. It’s used as in, "why don’t you go and sus out that restaurant?" or "I’ll sus him out for you." As a side note, citing bibliographic sources is also called sourcing, not citing.

Although you could probably get by with "intense" or "hard-core" here, if you want to be Australian about it you go "full-on." The movie was full-on, the day of team building activities was full-on, the encounter with the great white shark was really full-on.

There’s also a handful of words that we use and understand, but just don’t feel the need to drag into every other sentence. "Heaps" is one of these. Arguably we use "lots" to the same level of excess, but, hey, it never bothered me. A word, though, that for some reason just grates my nerves this side of the Pacific is "venue." I don’t know why, but everything has to happen at a venue. Not a restaurant, a conference center, a hotel, a reception hall, a studio, a theater or even, good gracious, a place, but a venue. Ooh la la.

"Good on ya" is one of the quintessentially Australian expressions that I could never pull off and sound natural about it. It’s used similarly to "good for you," and means something akin to "good job," but half the time it’s sarcastic. Good luck with it, and good on you if can get it right.

Oddly enough, "reckon" is not just restricted to rednecks. Lots of people here use it lots. "Whaddaya reckon?" or "I reckon if we meet at 6 we’ll beat the crowd" or "Do you reckon the American can understand us?"

Another Australian oddity is "keen (on)." It’s to like something, or want to do something, and doesn’t just have to do with being intellectually zippy. "A group of us are going out for Thai. You keen?" or "So, who’s keen for bowling?" or "I’m keen to get started."

Of course, there’s also the standard Australism "mate." Used frequently by some and hardly ever by others, it keeps people on the same plane. If you’re not Australian, though, you definitely shouldn’t try it in public.

On a more grammatical note, Australians, like the Brits, have a very interesting reverse-gerund sort of way of changing nouns into verbs. Thus, we get all sorts of expressions like "having a think," "having a sleep," "having a browse" or "having a surf." You can figure out what they mean, but again, would rarely produce something similar. (Although "taking a nap" springs to mind as an exception.)

They also do very odd things with prepositions here. Most notably, things are located in streets instead of on them. That store’s in York Street, he works in George Street, she lives in Liverpool Street.

There’s a few differences in punctuation, but to save me from appearing entirely pedantic, I think I’ll skip them for now. Full stop.

quicko: noooo

What part of NO don't you understand?

Personally, it's somewhere around the third syllable I start getting confused.

Australians have the most unique way of pronouning "O." It's pretty much impossible to mimic, but it spreads the seemingly short sound from one day into the next. Ooooooh, what a feat.