Ya a’right

Ever since I have moved here, I keep hearing this term “Ya A’right??”. It is the first thing that comes out of everyone’s mouth when they see me. Initially, I thought that I looked sick or tired and hence the question. But they weren’t bothered to wait for my answer anyway. So why question me something like that and not wait for what I want to say if I had anything to say at all…I wondered.

In my school, there is this class teacher who helped me out when I joined and I consider her a friend (I say this because I am not sure if she considers me as one yet, but that’s a’right to me 😉 ) She is one of the very few with whom I can be myself  (i.e. not necessarily be polite for every small thing that they do or say 😀 ) She says that word with a very North England accent and that kind of fascinates me. Yesterday, when she said that as a greeting, I asked her if that question was rhetoric or if she really wanted to know if I was a’right. She stood and looked at me for some time and then laughed and then proceeded to explain how it is a polite way of saying hi over here and that it was kind of rhetoric (at least that is what I inferred from her explanation). I asked her why people complicated things like that when they can just say a word with two letters and instead go to all that rhetoric questions and leave people like me confused. She looked at me, shook her head and laughed and went to her class. We left that discussion at that. I came home told Mr M the incident and he said that I was troubling that poor teacher.

Today when she came in, she said ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ and I burst out laughing. I was totally expecting her “a’right” and was ready with an answer but she did a one up on me and changed her greeting. She was like ‘you happy? is that to your satisfaction madam? are you feeling good?’ I couldn’t stop laughing and was in tears. I am quite a’right now 😉

Accentuation

Do you like accents and enjoy listening to the different ways the same language can be spoken? I sometimes start picking it up even without me realizing if I watch someone speak a particular accent for too long. I don’t know the nuances of each accent, like how the R is rolled (how do you roll an ‘R’ btw) or if you add an ‘f’ sound at the end etc…but enjoy listening to them nonetheless. Here is a video I found today about how various actors performed with different accents in their movies. It was quite interesting.

Mugachino ???

I hardly understood half of the words that was there in this new article “Ranga, bogan and mugachino among new words added to Australian dictionary” except for budgie smugglers because I remember some Australian Actor (was it Chris Hemsworth or Margot Robbie ? ) mention it in one of their interviews. Mugachino is so ….I don’t know…

In the recent years, languages are changing so much and so many slang terms are being accepted in the dictionaries. Don’t know if it is good or bad.  But I know that it is going to be a lot difficult if there are too many slang terms added and if not everyone is aware of it. I already have so many problems with words while communicating with someone in English. Don’t need no more complicated slang terms to confuse every one now yo. At the least, we can get some good laugh out of those mix-up, as we always do. What do you think? Do you use any of these slang terms? What other slang terms you think are popular?