How to understand Australians | Slang Words & Expressions

Ah Australia, the world's largest island.

The smallest continent. A big rock.

And a very pretty harbour.

You should definitely visit if you have the chance.

You absolutely should.

I'm Emma from mmmEnglish and I'm also Australian.

Here on YouTube, you are always asking me

about where I'm from so I guess I don't say it enough.

But here in Australia, we speak English with a distinctly

Australian accent which has some unique features,

some that are similar to British English and others

that are more closely aligned

with American English pronunciation.

But for most people who come to visit,

whether they're an English speaker or not,

they're confused or they're dumbfounded, surprised

by our slang vocabulary.

So in this video, I'm gonna share forty slang expressions

that you need to know if you plan to move here,

to visit here, to study here,

or even if you're just hanging out with some Australians

in some other part of the world.

This lesson will help to reveal that mysterious secret

slang language that Australians use to communicate.

A little history lesson first. Australia is a British colony

so our grammar rules and our spelling rules

are the same as British English and that means

they're a little different from American English.

Our sense of humour is also quite similar to Brits,

even some of our slang words are the same.

That sense of humour is dry, it's sarcastic.

It can sometimes take a little bit of getting used to,

especially because with sarcasm, it often involves

saying one thing but the tone and the body language

is completely opposite, you know, like a joke

that's said with a completely straight face so it's

really hard to know if they're actually joking or not.

We are generally pretty easygoing people, you know,

we definitely don't take ourselves too seriously.

In fact, we're usually laughing at ourselves,

making fun of our mates, joking around.

So in Australia, if an Australian is making fun of you,

quite often it means that they actually like you,

it's a weird way of showing affection.

The best thing that you can do is make an Australian

laugh, you will be mates for life.

Now a mate is a friend, right? This is

one of the most important words to an Australian.

It's usually an affectionate word, you know, meaning

friend but

mate can also be your partner, your brother, your sister,

your son, your daughter, your friend, your colleague

and a mate can also be a total stranger.

Anyone can be called mate, right?

Mate, how are you?

Cool, I will catch you later mate.

It's super friendly.

But with a shift in tone, it can also be used

to confront someone about a problem.

Listen, mate, we need to talk about this.

Mate, calm down I'm not trying to start an argument.

In fact, the Australian police usually walk up

to any situation and start with

"Hey mate"

like friend, relax. I'm here to help.

Now I know this concept of mate and

mate,

it could be really confusing, right?

But try to use facial expression and tone as a guide,

you know, is it friendly? Is it serious?

If you're doing the wrong thing and someone

walks up to you and says

"Mate, what do you think you're doing?"

you know, they're pissed off right

and that's Australian for annoyed.

Now a lot of slang words in Australia follow a really

similar pattern.

You take the original word and you shorten it

and then you add either

EEE, AHH or OH at the end.

Now this is really, really common.

These words are really commonly used all the way

across Australia, across all levels of society.

You'll hear the Prime Minister using these words

along with a truck driver that's driving across

the Nullarbor which is

the big dirt patch in the middle of Australia.

Now there are literally hundreds of funny words like this

and that can be really intimidating to try and learn

but the ones that I'm including in this video are

ones that I use regularly myself, ones that I hear

people use, my friends, my colleagues, my family.

They use them all the time.

Or ones that regularly come up in the media

because these ones are all relevant, current,

slang words to learn right?

And if you look up Australian slang on a whole

bunch of websites, it might be quite funny to read

all of these random words but actually not a lot of them

really get used anymore, you know, they're sort of

from a few decades ago.

In Australia, we are big fans of footy

but not this type of footy, that's soccer.

This is Australian football, footy.

Now I want you to really pay attention to that flap

T sound, it sounds more like a D, right? Footy.

If you're moving to Melbourne in particular, one of the

first things that you'll need to do is pick a footy team.

Okay this question will get asked of you probably often.

So get amongst it, go to a couple of games,

even if it's just to say that you did, it's a really good place

to start to understand Australian culture.

Barbie is a barbecue.

Snags, sausages.

Arvo, afternoon.

We're gonna throw some snags on the barbie

on Saturday arvo! Come round.

And that really just means we're going to cook some

sausages on the barbecue on Saturday afternoon

come over.

Avo, avocado.

Brekkie, breakfast.

Avo on toast is a very common breakfast meal at

cafes in Australia.

It seemed to be the reason why young Australians can't

actually save enough money to buy a house

because they keep spending all their money on going

out for breakfast and having avo on toast.

So avo is a very common thing to eat for breakfast.

It's definitely also common at brunch.

Now brunch is a meal between breakfast and lunch,

common in Australia but in other English speaking

countries too. Now it's not in addition to those meals,

it usually replaces one or the other.

Usually on weekends when

lots of people have a sleep in, maybe they wake up later.

So on Saturday and Sunday in Australia you would

definitely see a lot of people out for brunch

on the weekend.

Alright let's talk about some places now. So

McDonald's is called Maccas.

Now if anyone asks you to do a Maccas run,

it means go out and pick up McDonald's

and bring it back for everyone.

Or you might say

"I'm just waiting on the corner near Maccas"

Now uni is university, uni.

What did you study at uni?

How's uni going?

This is incredibly common.

If you're planning to study in Australia,

really the only time that you're going to hear the word

'university' is in formal context.

Everyone else is gonna talk about uni.

So that's university.

The servo is a service station

or a petrol station.

Now in America the fuel that goes in your car

is called gas but you won't hear people in Australia

calling it gas. We call it petrol.

So this place is a petrol station or a service station,

a place to service your car

hence the servo.

I need to stop at the servo on the way.

means I need to stop and get some petrol.

The bottle-o.

The bottle-o is a bottle shop or a liquor store,

a shop that sells alcohol.

In Australia, places where you can buy alcohol

are strictly regulated so you can't buy alcohol

at a 7-Eleven like you can in some countries.

You have to go to the bottle shop, the bottle-o.

Hey I'm gonna stop at the bottle-o on the way,

let me know if you need me to pick something up.

Now while we're on the subject,

Australians love a drink and one of the best places to sit

and to observe Australian life is in a pub,

at the beach or at the pub.

It's a really social space and a great space

to strike up a conversation with someone

and to have a chat.

But I wanted to share a few more words

that you might need.

So a slab is a carton of beer,

usually a twenty-four pack of beer right in a box.

A tinny is a can of beer.

A stubby is a bottle of beer.

And a stubby cooler, one of these hideous things

is used to keep your stubby or your tinny cold

during the long hot Australian summers.

These are tourist souvenirs that you can get in

any servo, anywhere around Australia

and you can collect all of the ugliest ones that you can

find and keep them as souvenirs

of your time in Australia.

This one's from the Nanutarra Road House.

It's got a goanna, a road train and an eagle.

Every Australian has at least twenty of them

stuffed in random places around their house

and generally

the gaudier, the uglier, the better.

And an esky is what you need to take to the park

to keep your drinks and your food cooling so it's like

an insulated box where you put ice

and keep your drinks cool, that's an esky.

Lotto is the lottery.

The most I've ever won on a lotto ticket is

about fifty bucks.

And bucks is slang for dollars.

If I catch an uber home from the city,

it usually costs me about thirty bucks.

Ripper is a good expression when something's going well

or it's good like "ah ripper!"

You could say

"You little Ripper!" when something's really good.

You've got great news. Or you could say

"Bloody ripper!"

when something's really great like when

you win the lotto.

Bloody ripper!

What a great day!

In Australia, many, many, many suburbs and place

names are also shortened too.

So Brissie is Brisbane.

Tassie is Tasmania

Sandy is Sandringham.

Freo is Fremantle.

Rotto is Rottnest Island in WA.

The Goldie is the Gold Coast in Queensland.

The G is the MCG, famous sports ground in Melbourne.

And if there are any Australians watching and

you can think of others,

please let me know in the comments, hit me up.

There are so many of these,

the list is way too long to continue with here.

But the point is that if you hear a word that you don't

recognise, it's totally okay to ask, you know.

Australians know that not everyone understands our

slang way of you know,

referring to things, especially place names.

So if you're not sure, just ask.

Another really important place is the loo,

the toilet.

So the dunny used to be a very Australian expression

but it's rarely used now. Lots of random Australian slang

websites include it because it's funny

but don't bother learning it and actually using it.

Nobody does it.

So people who are involved in construction work

are often called tradespeople. They're the skilled people

who also come to your house to fix things

when they break.

Now in Australia, of course, we have shortened

the names for all of these people.

Starting with tradie. Now tradie is a tradesman.

It's a really general word for everyone who works in that

type of industry.

But specifically a brickie is a bricklayer.

A sparkie is an electrician.

A chippie is a carpenter.

And this kind of continues into all

other types of work as well.

A truckie is a truck driver.

A poli is a politician

and you'll often hear this used in

Australian media when talking about politicians.

A sickie is a sick day.

But not a real sick day.

I don't know if this happens much in your country but

a sickie is when you take a day off work but you're not

actually sick.

Maybe it's because the weather's really nice and you

want to go fishing with your mates.

This is called chucking a sickie or pulling a sickie.

What else is there?

Info is information. Intro is introduction.

And I think those two are pretty commonly used across

lots of different English-speaking countries but

in Australia we definitely love it

because we love those shortened versions.

A mo, the moustache.

A roo is a kangaroo.

Mozzie is a mosquito. I hate those guys!

For some reason they always come after me so

I am always taking mozzie spray with me

everywhere I go in summer.

This insect repellent is called mozzie spray

in Australia.

Anyway that is a solid list of

relevant Australian slang words to learn

and even if you don't use them yourself,

just becoming familiar with them is going to help you

to understand Australian native English speakers

so much more easily.

Now you might even be able to think of some others

so let me know in the comments if you've got some

other ideas and suggestions.

But also if you've got some questions about how these

words are regularly used or

maybe you've heard of another slang word

and you're not sure about the meaning

or if it's commonly used,

let me know in the comments. I'd be happy to jump

down and answer your questions there.

Now I know it's unlikely that you'll be

travelling to Australia anytime soon but

if you want to follow me on my adventures in Australia,

well make sure you come check out my

Instagram account here.

I'm gonna be heading up north on a camping trip in

a couple of months and I'm really excited to share

my beautiful country with you

and take you along for the journey

so come check it out if you want to come along.

Otherwise, I will see you in the next lesson.

See you there!