Why Do Australians Say It This Way? · Season One: Hearing More Than the Literal Words · Article 11
Somebody asks:
“Did you watch the footy last night?”
You know that footy is connected with football, but one crucial piece of information is missing. Which football?
In Melbourne, the question is likely to refer to Australian rules football, particularly an AFL match. In many Sydney and Brisbane communities, the speaker may be thinking of rugby league and the NRL. A family devoted to soccer may use football for the code that most of the world gives that name. Rugby union has its own settings as well.
Context usually supplies the answer faster than a dictionary
On a Monday morning in a Melbourne office, somebody mentions the weekend’s footy, then starts talking about Collingwood and the MCG. The answer is clear. When a Sydney conversation contains State of Origin, the Rabbitohs or the Panthers, listeners enter the world of rugby league.
Even if the team names are unfamiliar, vocabulary from the game can help. Marks, behinds and six points suggest Australian rules. Try, tackle count and State of Origin point to rugby league. Mention of the Premier League, the Matildas or the Socceroos brings association football—the game many Australians still call soccer—into focus.
Real conversation rarely places footy alone in a vacuum. Teams, venues, seasons, cities and shared memories remove the ambiguity together. It is the newcomer to the discussion who notices how much background everybody else has been able to leave unsaid.
Regional difference extends beyond sport
Australia is often described as having relatively modest regional accent differences. Compared with Britain or the United States, it may indeed be difficult to identify somebody’s state from a few seconds of pronunciation. Walk into a fish-and-chip shop or head for a swimming pool, however, and regional vocabulary quickly appears.
A battered, deep-fried slice of potato is commonly a potato cake in Victoria, a potato scallop for many speakers in New South Wales and Queensland, and can be a potato fritter in South Australia. Swimwear may be bathers, swimmers, togs or cossies. A public drinking-water fixture is a bubbler for some people, while drinking fountain is more natural elsewhere.
In 2015, the Linguistics Roadshow conducted an online survey with more than 20,000 participants. Overall, bathers received about 49 per cent of responses, swimmers 25.2 per cent and togs 16.7 per cent. For the fried potato slice, potato cake and potato scallop received about 44.3 and 36.3 per cent respectively. Maps revealed strong regional clusters.
Why do people argue so seriously about a slice of potato?
The potato cake–potato scallop dispute rarely needs a linguistic ruling. Most participants understand perfectly well what the other term denotes, while continuing to insist that their own name is the proper one.
That is because vocabulary does more than label objects. It stores place of upbringing and group belonging. Somebody who continues to say togs after moving interstate may retain a small part of Queensland life in that word. A listener may immediately ask whether they grew up elsewhere. Two syllables have completed a mild act of regional identification.
Who decides the “correct name”?
If a menu says potato scallop, a Victorian may dislike the wording while still knowing the business’s chosen name. Linguistic correctness here is not a property inside the food. The slice does not become a different object when it crosses a state boundary. A community’s established label changes.
Similarly, football can have an exact definition inside the name of an international governing body, while Australian speech communities give the everyday default to the locally prominent code. Language operates continually between official naming and ordinary expectation.
Which word should a newcomer learn?
Begin with general forms that avoid misunderstanding. Everybody understands swimwear. Pointing to an item on a menu works. In sports conversation, you can say AFL, rugby league, rugby union or soccer.
When a menu term is unfamiliar, asking about the item is natural: Is that a battered slice of potato? Some names can also cover slightly different preparations at different shops, so a state border is not a complete guide. A language map shows tendencies; the food at the counter is what you are buying.
Australian English does not have one permanent background setting
Hearing footy without knowing the game does not show that your vocabulary has failed. What you lack is the local background that the speaker assumed was shared.
The example reminds us that understanding English is not only a process of replacing a word with a definition. Speakers use one short form to call up a city, teams, family traditions and seasons of remembered matches. Inside the local community, the answer arrives too quickly to require explanation. Across a state border, the default can change.
Specifying the code first does not make anyone sound less local.
Primary sources and further reading
- Pauline Bryant, “A Dialect Survey of the Lexicon of Australian English”
- Linguistics Roadshow, “Mapping Words Around Australia”
- ABC News, “Divide over Potato Cake and Scallop, Bathers and Togs Mapped”
Continue reading: Why Do Australians Say It This Way? — Series overview
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