Why can’t you non-Americans just recognize that we now own the English language. If we do it a certain way, it is, by definition, right. Do we need to drop some bombs on you or something?
The problem is that these kinds of exchanges turn out not to be nearly as interesting, exciting, or witty as their drunken participants seem to think they are.
It’s not that we can’t get it right. It’s that we can’t be bothered to care. If Australians care so much about it, then they should make the spelling match the pronunciation. If it’s “Aussie,” pronounce it “ossy.” If it’s pronounced “ozzy,” spell it “Ozzie.”
Otherwise, just let it go and consider “ossy” the American English pronunciation.
We’re working on it, but people are resistant to being corrected.
Via its millions of fast food outlets, McDonalds Corporation has been working diligently with “drive-thru”. The various govenments have renamed dual carriageways to “thruways”.
Meanwhile, our rock bands and graphic novelists are working on changing enough to “enuff”. The Homer Simpson campaign started off well but wandered off in the wrong direction. Doh!
I’m counting on America’s texting teens to reduce the remainder of those words to
their correct spelling any day now. They’ve made remarkable progress on extracting the ugh from thought to produce “thot”. So far, everyone’s stayed away from cough as if it had cooties. I’m thinking that we’ll just replace the word with “GAAAK !!”
Here I was thinking it was some sort of homage to Oz, the land from the Frank L. Baum books. I keep wondering why Australians are so fond of a story that started in Kansas. But since Oz is a mysterious and magical place, the assumption was that was the connections. Australians are trying to say that Australia is mystical and magical and fun and not at all boring like Kansas.
And so they spell it Ozzy. “I’m an Ozzy.” “Ozzies like Fosters.”
I don’t think it started that way: it was just a shortening of “Australia”. However, starting in the 1960s people noticed the L. Frank Baum connection and wrote “Oz” instead of “Aus”. Richard Neville may have been responsible, with the publication of the magazine Oz, but Barry Humphries may have helped in popularisng the term.
But generally I agree that Australians write the words as “Oz” and “Aussie”. I don’t think they are trying to confuse Americans, but I can see that they might.