Transcript of AE 1437 - Some Very RUDE Aussie Slang | Does Dad Know It Ep 6

Pete:
G'day you mob. Welcome to Aussie English. I'm your host, Pete, and my objective here is to teach you guys the English spoken Down Under. So whether you want to sound like a fair dinkum Aussie or you just want to understand what the flipping hell we're on about when we're having a yarn, you've come to the right place. So sit back, grab a cuppa and enjoy Aussie English. Let's go!

Pete:
Dad, what's going on?

Ian:
Not much. Pete.

Pete:
All right. Larrikin! Number one. Larrikin! Do you know any larrikins?

Ian:
I do.

Pete:
Yeah?

Ian:
Yeah. Several.

Pete:
Cool. All right. Number two...

Ian:
A larrikin is a, usually a child through to young adult who is, has a propensity for misbehaviour but not in a bad, illegal, evil way. It's just, Ah, you know, he just messes around a bit and he fools around. So.

Pete:
It has a legend, apparently, of coming from larking around.

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
Being pronounced by Irish people as...

Ian:
Larking around!

Pete:
And then it became larrikin. Yeah, exactly. Because they roll their eyes.

Ian:
Yeah. Larrikin.

Pete:
Roll 'em, roll them. They they say them, they articulate them a little more than we do. Larrikin. Becoming larrikin. Yeah. So how would you use this in a sentence?

Ian:
"Oh, dad, that guy's fooling around." "Oh he's just a larrikin. Leave him alone."

Pete:
Yeah, it's kind of a, a lovable type.

Ian:
A lovable rogue.

Pete:
It's like a dag or something, right?

Ian:
Rogue.

Pete:
Again, if you were angry.

Ian:
It's not daggy, it's...

Pete:
No. But Dagg is kind of used, like, affectionately with someone..

Ian:
You don't use larrikins. Larrikins not not insulting.

Pete:
Yeah. That's it again, if you're really..

Ian:
Just a larrikin.

Pete:
If you were really angry with someone..

Ian:
He'll get over it when he grows up.

Pete:
And you called him a larrikin.

Ian:
She's a never never larrikin. I don't know, there's a larroquette. I don't think.

Pete:
Women are just more sensible than men, Dad.

Ian:
Yeah, exactly.

Pete:
Just they're just not idiots, you know? But, I feel like. Yeah, if you try to offend someone by calling them a larrikin, they'd just laugh in your face.

Ian:
Oh, jeez. You're a larrikin.

Pete:
You duffer!

Ian:
You duffer!

Pete:
Yeah, that's it. Strong words. Number two. Mozzie.

Ian:
Mozzie?

Pete:
This one's a ...

Ian:
Abbreviation of mosquito.

Pete:
It's eternal, right?

Ian:
It is. This one will never go away.

Pete:
And I think from.

Ian:
Aussie mozzie.

Pete:
An Aussie mozzie?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Mosquitoes. One of these interesting words. Right. Where the origin of the name. I think it's either Spanish or Portuguese. Where it's like small fly. Yeah. Mosquito from Spanish and Portuguese, meaning little fly, yeah, "muscito" from the 1580s. Isn't that funny? So we get this "mosca" is like "fly" in Spanish and Portuguese and "-ito" I guess is the diminutive making it smaller?

Ian:
Yeah. And I think it came from memory. It came when Portuguese and Spanish got to southern Africa, when they were exploring around the Cape of Good Hope.

Pete:
Yeah. Okay.

Ian:
And there are lots of mosquitoes around.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Down in southern Africa. And so they, you know, suddenly the word they made up a word for all these little flies.

Pete:
I feel like if we were given that job, we would come up with something...

Ian:
Fucking mozzies!

Pete:
So much ruder for that type of animal...

Ian:
A little fly.

Pete:
Yeah. That's it.

Ian:
Fucking piss.

Pete:
Come with wings. Number three. Not here to fuck spiders. While we're getting rude. While we're being.

Ian:
That one. That one's a ...

Pete:
That's more recent.

Ian:
It's relatively modern. It just means we're not here to mess around. And I'm not sure why fucking spiders is even an opportunity for messing around. It's like if if one were to attempt to have sexual intercourse with a spider, it would be less mucking around than any other thing I could think of.

Pete:
It's going to end badly for both. Probably more for the spider.

Ian:
It depends which sort of spider.

Pete:
Oh, geez. Either you need the world's biggest spider or the smallest man.

Ian:
It's it's a it's it's one of those expressions that is just patently ridiculous.

Pete:
Yes. That's the humour.

Ian:
And that's the humour in it. Yeah.

Pete:
The only other one that I really know like this, that, that I heard recently and just pissed myself laughing. It was on ABC's You Can't Ask that. And I think it was about it was about people who had nearly died. So this TV show is called You Can't Ask That. And they effectively get, you know, people that have had shared experiences or the same sexuality or whatever, and they ask them questions, anonymous questions, right? So people send in these questions, they choose the best ones. And then they ask these people, this guy had survived some near-death experience. And I remember he said this phrase of like, Oh, mate, I felt like I'd been kissed on the dick by a fairy. And I remember thinking, Oh my God. That one's never gonna leave me. That one's never gonna leave me!

Ian:
But it also, because it's ambiguous, it makes it even worse.

Pete:
Yeah. That's it. I guess. Yeah. But, that. And we're not here to fuck spiders.

Ian:
I cannot remember who it was, and I won't attempt to guess because I will slander whoever I say it about if I got it wrong. There was a very well known Australian actress, female, obviously actor who was on, I think The Graham Norton Show. It's a British talkback show. Talk show, television show.

Pete:
Oh, this is gonna get dirty.

Ian:
No. Who actually, you know, somebody you know, they were talking to her about a new movie or whatever and alleged, and she actually said it. She came out and said, Yeah, we're not here to fuck spiders. Can we just get on with it? And the whole audience, they've never heard the expression before.

Pete:
Yeah. It's it's so funny, isn't it? Because a big part of Australian culture. And I think the reason we love slang so much is that it kind of allows us to emphasise our australianness.

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
Our Australian-ness.

Ian:
The larrikin in us.

Pete:
Exactly. And so by using these things, and again, they're very informal guys and I know they're rude. Some of you guys are probably cringing because we're swearing a little bit, but it's good to know these things and understand that...

Ian:
When you hear them..

Pete:
It's not them. But we're not targeting people in an offensive way.

Ian:
Particularly rude.

Pete:
It's trying to be humorous and informal at the same time. So again, I would watch who I would say this sort of stuff around.

Ian:
Yeah. You're not going to say it to your your your new boyfriend's grandmother.

Pete:
Oh my God.

Ian:
"We're not fucking spiders."

Pete:
"You're what?" It's funny. I was thinking about my nana, and she's going deaf. And I think it's the kind of thing where if she heard me say this,

Ian:
She would double take and go.

Pete:
She would just pretend like she heard nothing. Yeah, yeah. Or just assume she heard something else.

Ian:
Just heard something else.

Pete:
Yeah, exactly. But yeah, so I would. These are the kinds of things I would say in very informal company where they're not going to...

Ian:
People you know, and trust.

Pete:
Exactly.

Ian:
You don't say it to your boss at work.

Pete:
That's it. "I felt like I'd been kissed on the dick by a fairy."

Ian:
Yeah. "We're not here to fuck spiders, boss!"

Pete:
Yeah. Jesus. All right, number four. Wrapped.

Ian:
Wrapped. I am "enraptured" with something. It is. I'm very happy that something has happened. It's an abbreviation of enraptured.

Pete:
I always thought it was wrapped up, but then you say the spelling. And it's R A P T.

Ian:
Yeah. Rapt. Enraptured.

Pete:
There you go.

Ian:
I'm very pleased that this has happened.

Pete:
Ah, extremely pleased or delighted.

Ian:
I'm. I love her, I'm rapt that this has happened. Yeah.

Pete:
"She was rapt with"...

Ian:
"I was rapt that The Bombers won a game last month."

Pete:
Yeah, yeah. I didn't realise The Bombers haven't won a premiership in like 30 years or something.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Yeah. What has it been since the 90s?

Ian:
Um. 2000.

Pete:
Yeah. Jeez. Okay.

Ian:
Carlton hasn't won one since 1995. Saint Kilda hasn't won one forever. No. Well, 1966.

Pete:
When do those points start piling up so that you get more generous, some selections at the start of the year.

Ian:
Now. For Essendon, I hope. Anyway, we are sidetracked with football on...

Pete:
Alright. In one of the previous lessons we talked about "cracking a tinny". Now we've got the term "tinny".

Ian:
Tinny?

Pete:
So I guess we've sort of covered it. But a tinny is?

Ian:
A tinny. Well, typically now, "a tinny" gets used to mean a small fishing boat.

Pete:
Yeah, probably.

Ian:
It's now an aluminium boat. Yeah. Not a not a well, it doesn't have a cabin. It's basically and it's almost always flat bottomed.

Pete:
Have they pretty much been stamped?

Ian:
Now they..

Pete:
Like is that how...

Ian:
Pretty much.

Pete:
Like...

Ian:
A giant machine and go yeah, there's a few welds in them. But yeah, yeah, they're just a small aluminium fishing boat.

Pete:
Again, if you've seen the movie Crocodile Dundee, that's the boat he has on top of his car when he's up in the Northern Territory. And then he gets attacked by the croc and it bites the tinny in half or whatever. So that's a tinny. Yeah, I wouldn't use this as much for a can of beer anymore.

Ian:
No, but unless it was a joke...

Pete:
"Yeah. Let's crack a tinny, Dad."

Ian:
"Yeah, crack a tinny"...

Pete:
"Bring some tinnies over."

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Okay, number six. A "ute".

Ian:
A "ute", a utility vehicle.

Pete:
A utility vehicle. What is a utility? How would you describe it?

Ian:
It is a. It is a small truck with usually and traditionally only had front seats and the rear was just an open tray.

Pete:
I think the story is that there was some. There was some farmer, right, who. He needed a vehicle that he could use to do farming work. Back in the 30s or 40s, right. And then he, I think it was hol- with Holden. He asked Holden. He's like, this is the kind of car I need for the tool. The, the thing that I'm doing. And his wife was like, I need to be able to take a pig to market on the weekends as well to be able to put animals in the back. And so they were like, Oh, we'll just put a tray in the back and you'll just have two seats up front.

Ian:
Exactly.

Pete:
And it became this Australian thing, and...

Ian:
So in America, they call them pickup trucks.

Pete:
They they're a bit different though, right?

Ian:
Yeah. It's basically the same.

Pete:
It's overlapping now. But back in the day...

Ian:
Back in the day they were they were basically a standard car, a sedan that just had no back seat..

Pete:
The reverse of a convertible.

Ian:
Yeah, and just a tray. Well, not a flat tray. It was. It was surrounded.

Pete:
Ruffled as well, right. Quite often in the back so that the water would drain out of it. Yeah. You'll see them around quite a lot. But it's sort of sad that we're losing all those older. Probably up until the early 2000s...

Ian:
We don't manufacture.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
They were all Holdens and Falcons, Fords and General Motors. But...

Pete:
Commodores and Falcons.

Ian:
Yeah. We don't manufacture those cars in Australia anymore. I know manufacturing cars...

Pete:
I have a feeling when those start disappearing completely because they, you know, just end up getting wrecked and recycled or whatever.

Ian:
They'll start remanufacturing.

Pete:
That someone's gonna be like, we need these cars back.

Ian:
Yeah. There'll be a Toyota ute.

Pete:
There'll be a movement. It'll be one of these but...

Ian:
But there are now. They're, now they're nearly all four wheel drive.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Or there are two wheel drive versions of what were originally four wheel drive trucks.

Pete:
But the V8 one, right. Like I think that's what people are going to miss being able to do some doughies in the car park with your V8 ute. You know that you can't do that in a Hyundai Tasman or whatever it's called. All right. Number seven. A whinge.

Ian:
A whinge?

Pete:
"Have a whinge"?

Ian:
"Have a whinge" means to complain about something, usually in a whingy whiny voice.

Pete:
Again, I think like the word whinge is used everywhere in English, but we would say have "a whinge" quite a lot in Australia.

Ian:
It is. It is a noun. It- "whinging", again, "whinging" is the verb.

Pete:
Yep.

Ian:
The verb "to whinge" would never get used.

Pete:
You don't reckon? "I'm calling him up to whinge about my wife."

Ian:
No.

Pete:
"To whinge about my mates", "might have a bit of a whinge". I would probably use "to have a whinge", I think.

Ian:
"I would have a whinge." Yeah.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
So the verb got turned into a noun.

Pete:
Yeah, that's a good one. Do you use that, "to have a whinge"?

Ian:
Not about me, but usually about somebody else. "Oh, you cut out your whinging."

Pete:
That's- well, with kids at the moment, right?

Ian:
Yeah. Yeah.

Pete:
That's when it came back..

Ian:
"You two? Stop whinging!"

Pete:
Yeah. Isn't that funny? Just a random like shower thought. As you have kids, your vocabulary probably significantly changes in your language.

Ian:
It reduces.

Pete:
Yeah, no, but it changes because all of a sudden you're talking about or experiencing completely different things than you were previously. So.

Ian:
The swear words get dropped.

Pete:
Yeah..

Ian:
15 years.

Pete:
For some of us.

Ian:
So your kids, your kids come home with them.

Pete:
I remember that with you guys. I think you and mum.

Ian:
We never swore around you.

Pete:
No. And then once we became teenagers, you loosened up.

Ian:
Well, once you loosen, once you came in, you're "What're you fucking doing? Yeah. Fuck off."

Pete:
All right, number eight. "Yonks".

Ian:
"Yonks" means a long time.

Pete:
Does it come from "donkey's years"?

Ian:
I think it does. I think it is rhyming slang for "donkey's years".

Pete:
Origin of yonks...

Ian:
Means a long time.

Pete:
It's got to be "donkey's years", right? "Yonks" meaning a long time. Uncertain. Okay. Uncertain origin. But we do have "donkey's years", which is widely considered a playful clipping of rhyming slang. Evolution of donkey's. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Yonks is often considered to have come from donkeys years, meaning a long time.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And sometimes people will say "yonkeys deers".

Ian:
"Yonkeys deers".

Pete:
"Who's Yonkey and why does he have deers?"

Ian:
Yeah, exactly. Stop calling me dear.

Pete:
Oh, man. It's been "yonkeys deers".

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
Yeah. Do you use "yonks"?

Ian:
Uh, no, but I probably did when I was a kid.

Pete:
There's a lot of ways to...

Ian:
"It's been yonks since I've seen you."

Pete:
There's lots of ways. Ages?

Ian:
Yeah, ages.

Pete:
It's been. "It's been ages." "It's been yonks." "It's been donkeys years."

Ian:
"Ages" is a, you know, more normal speech. Not a not slang, but "yonks" is just. Yeah. Interchangeable with ages.

Pete:
Yeah. Okay.

Ian:
An unspecified long time.

Pete:
So how would you use "yonks" in a sentence?

Ian:
Just that "It's been yonks since I've seen you, mate."

Pete:
"How are you going? Haven't seen you in yonks."

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
"In yonks" as well.

Ian:
"In yonks", yeah.

Pete:
Number nine. "Beauty".

Ian:
"Beauty".

Pete:
He gave this one away, I think, previously.

Ian:
"Beauty"'s just generic. It's always been used and it always will be.

Pete:
This one's had long...

Ian:
Beauty..

Pete:
Long standing in Aussie slang.

Ian:
And its its use is like "beauty" is just an expression. It has no.

Pete:
As in like excellent or great or awesome. You mean like it's just one word...

Ian:
"Oh! Beauty!"

Pete:
Something good.

Ian:
"Oh, beauty."

Pete:
What a beauty.

Ian:
But so it's a an adjective, but "a beauty" is exactly the same word.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
"Oh, that's a beauty!"

Pete:
Well, now we've turned it into a noun..

Ian:
"Oh, she's a beauty."

Pete:
Yeah. "What a beauty, mate."

Ian:
Yeah. "Do you see me ute?" "Yeah. She's a beauty, mate." Yeah.

Pete:
And you can shorten it to "beaut".

Ian:
"Beaut".

Pete:
And I think. I think there's some.

Ian:
And obviously it comes from "beautiful".

Pete:
Yeah. Well. Or just "beauty".

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Right.

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
But I think I've seen that there. Some car company finally put two and two together and made one of their, like, taglines. "Get a Bute" and they just spelled it B U T E. Exactly. All right. Number ten. "Calm your farm".

Ian:
"Calm your farm". It just means "calm down".

Pete:
Have you. Did you hear this when you were younger?

Ian:
No.

Pete:
This came in later.

Ian:
This came in in the 90s, probably.

Pete:
See? It's funny.

Ian:
"Calm your farm!" It's it's just. It's a way of saying "you are out of control".

Pete:
"You need to calm down".

Ian:
"Just calm down".

Pete:
And again, it's a rhyming fun.

Ian:
It's, it's rhyming.

Pete:
"Calm your farm"

Ian:
But it's not rhyming slang for anything. It's just "farm" rhymes with "calm".

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Like, you know, "watch your head, Fred". When your name's Bill.

Pete:
"Settle, gretel!"

Ian:
Yeah, exactly.

Pete:
There's a whole bunch of those, right? Yeah. "Calm your farm". I remember hearing this. The first person I heard this from was my friend Emily. I think when we were doing my master's degree, she was or PhD. She was saying, "calm your farm, Pete". So this would have been like 2012 onwards. And it was similar to the "not here to fuck spiders". The first time I heard that was my housemate George when I was doing my PhD, probably 2015, '16. I remember him saying one day, you know, "let's go get some beers". And I was taking a while and he's like, "we're not here to fuck spiders, mate." And I remember being like, what? Like, because at that time, the first time you ever.

Ian:
First time you hear a ridiculous expression..

Pete:
You don't know. It's an expression.

Ian:
You got nothing.

Pete:
But you're also just like...

Ian:
Like, "Correct! We are not here to have intercourse with arachnids."

Pete:
I remember saying like, "Is that something we say?" Like. Or is that just you?

Ian:
"Did you just make it up?" Yeah.

Pete:
Uh. All right. Well, that's it guys. If you want to learn some slang, check out my slang ebook. Go to slangebook.com. One more time, www.slangebook.com. It'll be linked in the description. And we'll see you in the next one.

Ian:
Bye!

Pete:
See ya! All right, that's it for today. If you found this one helpful, leaving a quick review really does help other learners find the podcast. And if you know someone who's learning Aussie English, feel free to share this episode with them too, mate. Thanks for listening and I'll catch you in the next one.