AUSTRALIA - ADELAIDE

In my second blog, I mainly reflect on my experiences with the English language. As in the first blog mentioned, I knew that speaking English in a normal everyday situation would not be a big problem at all. In general, I am a very open person who likes to talk a lot when I feel comfortable, so I was kind of looking forward to talking a lot of English. I learnt one very important thing from home. If you don't know how to help yourself, then just ask someone for help, it usually saves you a lot of time and gets you to your destination faster. I also did that here in Australia, but of course in English. These short and actually quite banal conversations were always very easy for me. And I was never afraid to ask someone for help because I could only communicate in English. However I like the language a lot it´s very chill and flow during a conversation, not like German which sounds more abrupt, I think.

After the first submission in a subject, my personal highlight of the communication problem happened... I wanted to present to my tutor a facade company that was founded in Europe but is already known worldwide. The difficulty was that the topic was really just technical jargon. At first all the word I knew from German swirled around in my head and I couldn´t really find the right words at all. However the second time I talked to my tutor about this façade company, I quickly pulled out some sketches and detailed drawings of the facade system to simplify the conversation and somehow managed to bridge the language barrier.

Apart from this incident, nothing problematic or difficult has actually occurred for me. However, I'm already realising how much you get used to a language when you hear it every day. I'm also finding it easier and easier to reply quickly and make small talk in English. Another funny aspect of Australian language behavior is their greeting. Compared to Austria or Liechtenstein where the greetings are short, a lot is said as a greeting in Australia. When you enter a shop, the shop assistant doesn't just say hello, but mostly hello, how are you? That was very confusing for me at the beginning, and I never really knew how to react.

To be honest, I'm still a bit overwhelmed by this greeting, as no serious response is expected from the other person, more a yes, all good what about you? This behaviour took some getting used to, and the phrase no worries is used everywhere in Australia and attached to everything. In German, you would say something like kein Probelm, which in turn would not fit everywhere here.

Apart from the small words, Australian slang also takes a lot of getting used to. Although the slang in Adelaide is actually very easy and not to strong, it gets worse the further north you go. In Cairns, most people speak with a very strong slang which often sounds very nasal to us. But even here you can hear the ease and relaxed nature of the Australians. Everything is simple and relaxed in life. In addition to slang, Australians also have very funny abbreviations for many words. For example, footy is Australian football, polly is a policeman and barbie is a barbecue. So it goes through and through with common everyday terms, but you quickly get used to them and understand better and better what the actual meaning behind the abbreviations is. In my opinion, these abbreviations make the language much more relaxed and much more fun to talk about.