Dear Ed Zotti. Re: Restrictive Language.

You’re welcome to challenge an adversary to a “match” under those terms. However:

  1. Your adversary would need to agree. And probably the only ones who will accept would be ones that are sure they could beat you.

  2. Bystanders will be commenting on both your posts, so it’s not going to remain a one-on-one match.

  3. The moderators are not going to referee the match or try to control what other posters say (as long as they stay within forum rules).

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?

… Oh, a working-class hero is something to be …

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.

Genius!

I assume, based on this recommendation, that when you speak, you pronounce all of the following words the same:

thought
through
dough
enough
cough

I don’t hear anyone whining about the pronunciation of those words.

Yo Mamma is a very beautiful and kind lady and is an excellent cook.

Is that how it works?

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 !!”

You know who else could get behind this? Yo mamma.

You know who else is fat? A fat guy.

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.”

Not that they can’t pronounce Aussie correctly. :wink:

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.

Hey, it isn’t Oz-tralia with a z sound, it’s Aus-tralia, with an s sound. We’re right, they’re wrong. So says an Ammareecan.

I know Aussie was short for Australian, but I’m talking about the pronunciation and the use of Oz and Ozzy.

So, have we decided whether it’s allowed to call someone “aussie” in the Pit? Or have I missed the point of the thread?

:slight_smile:

The rule is that you can’t call Kiwis “Aussies” (or “Ozzies”) in the Pit: if you do, Peter Jackson will have the orcs take you to Mordor.