The conversation below is close to the one I had with a bartender in Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia, near the Great Barrier Reef:
Bartender: G’day. [Hello]
Me: Hi. Do you have Bailey’s?
Bartender: Out of it, mate. [friend] Try the bottle shop (liquor store) down the street.
Me: The what?
Bartender: Bottle shop. They’ve got it.
Me: Never mind. What’s your most bitter beer?
Bartender: VB. [Victoria Bitter]
Me: Huh? OK, may I have that?
Bartender: Schooner? [a large glass]
Me: No, a VB.
Bartender: (Pours a large glass.) No worry, mate.
Me: By the way, where’s the rest room?
Bartender: Say again?
Me: The toilet.
Bartender: (Points.) The dunny [toilet] is over there.
Me: The what?
Bartender: The dunny [toilet].
Me: Oh. I thought you call it the loo.
Bartender: The Oz [Australian] vocabulary is rich enough to have more than one word for it.
Me: I guess. The weather is great here, considering it’s winter.
Bartender: Come in summer. You’ll see heaps of mozzies [mosquitoes] the size of your fist.
Me: Huh? (Taking the beer and leaving a tip.)
Bartender: You’re a good bloke. [man]
To purchase your copy of The Art of On-the-Job Writing by Philip Vassallo, click here: https://www.firstbooks.com/product_info.php?cPath=14&products_id=144
To purchase your copy of The Art of E-Mail Writing by Philip Vassallo, click here: https://www.firstbooks.com/product_info.php/cPath/53/products_id/196
Notes on effective writing at work, school, and home by Philip Vassallo, Ed.D.
-
A participant in one of my workshops, D. Hom, asked a question about hyphenating expressions such as “end of year.” Determining what to h...
-
The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) is busy creating a National Day on Writing, slated for October 20, 2009, as a way of reco...
-
When writers choose an unrelated point to distract readers from the real issue, they are committing the logical fallacy of a red herring . I...