It appears I’ll have to learn, because VWife and I have been selected for family relocation Down Under. She received this OFFICIAL E-mail over the weekend.
Of course, this screamed scam, and 10 seconds of Google-fu confirmed my suspicions. E-mail addresses deleted to protect the guilty, but you can find them easily enough if you wanna play
==========================
From: Australia Immigration
To: Recipients
Sent: Fri, May 16, 2014 6:53 pm
Subject: Re.: You have been selected for family resettlement to Australia
Attn:
You have been selected for family resettlement to Australia , you are
among the list of nominated for 2014 resettlement visa to Australia from
our head of mission and we have granted your resettlement on the condition
that you meet some basic requirements.
Please confirm if you receive this notice, then send us email so that we can
give your requirements.
Start Now: Family Application - Immigration Assessment to Australia >>
We look forward to providing you with professional and personalized immigration
support to Australia.
Should you required more information, please do not hesitate to contact us and
we guarantee a prompt reply.
Our Regard,
Hon. Thomas Smith
AUSFIS - Certified Immigration Experts
OK. You’ll need to understand some basic terms, forget the pronunciations for the time being.
You will drink beer. Good beer. You will also visit a pub. A pub is a place that decants beer.
Depending upon where you are going to be living, beer comes in different types of glass. In NSW you will ask for a schooner. If you come to Victoria, the bartender will laugh at you if you ask for a schooner. In Vic you ask for a pot.
If you are buying bottled beer, it comes in two sizes: 700ml is a longneck, 375 ml is a stubbie. It is perfectly couth to drink beer straight of a stubbie, but if you try the same with a longneck, people will assume you’re a hopeless alcoholic. Do not ever try to hide your beer in a paper bag…the assumption noted above applies.
Do not drink Fosters beer. Only Americans drink that shit. Same with light beer…why bother drinking something that is not going to get you drunk?
Your first purchase here should be an ESKY. It is a lightweight, portable box that keeps beer cold.
It’s also possible to spend years in the capital cities (and even a goodly area around them), and never hear ANYBODY that sounds like Steve Irwin. The non-rhotic element is still there of course, and yes we can do some odd things to vowels sometimes, but that traditional twang isn’t prevalent to the levels some people think it is. In the cities especially, it’s the first locally-born generation of children of migrants from various places who seem to be adopting a new version of the accent, and others are picking up on it. It’s faster than before, a bit more clipped, and they say there is a strong New Zealand element to it.
You hear the Irwin thing a bit in more remote country areas, but it’s increasingly rare.
Also, beware those online lists of Aussie slang - most of that stuff is lifted straight from the 1950s, and you will sound stilted if you use it. Not that there isn’t a lot of slang about, but I’m talking about things like “stone the flamin’ crows”. People just don’t say that stuff these days.
Remind me to take you for a pub crawl next time I’m down your way. There are schooners aplenty to be had in Melbs these days. Y’ just gotta know where to look.
… and of course Steve Irwin’s signature “Crikey” is almost (though probably not quite) as quaint to modern Australian ears as “Stone the flamin’ crows”.
Actually I think you’ll find a longneck is 750ml unless you Victorians have smaller sizes. And increasingly stubbies are 330ml, dammit. The standards (VB, XXXX, Crown etc) have stuck to 375ml but anything else is the smaller size.
