The Locals (September 21st, 2006)

I recently realized that I've complained a fair bit about local accents and curious word choice, without giving proper due to the great phrases non-Americans are contributing to the English language.

My favorite, by far, is the New Zealander's "sweet as!" line of sayings. Did something work out well? "Sweet as!" Sweet as what, exactly? It doesn't really matter, it's just sweet as. And it's not just limited to sweet, either. "Cool as", "cold as", and "funny as" were all used frequently. As far as I can tell you can throw "as" after any adjective and it'll work. Definitely fun.

Another great word is "knackered." This seems to be more of a British thing, but that's okay. The way they say "I was absolutely knackered" is so passionate, you can almost feel the knackered-ness just from talking to them. Knackered is almost always intensified with "absolutely" and everyone uses the same passionate emphasis. It always makes me smile.

What else? Oh yeah, one of my favorite words of all time, "queue." Dunno why, but I've always liked that word. And people down here use it! All the time. I don't really have any funny stories for queue, either. I'm just happy to see it getting some use down here.