Australian Science Fiction! Yes, there is such a creature. Let us admit that in the world science fiction scene it is no more than a footnote. But it is ours. I am asked if there is a distinctively Australian character to these writings. I do not think so. Writers' ap-proach and concerns are individual but … Continue reading Australian Science Fiction (Part 1)
Category: Australiana
Australiana
Australian English grammar There are even fewer collectible monographs on the grammar of Australian English than there are on pronunciation. Although Horvath’s Variation in Australian English touches on grammar at some points, the only book that focuses down on an area of Australian English grammar is the 1976 published version of a doctoral thesis from … Continue reading AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH: A NEGLECTED AREA OF AUSTRALIANA COLLECTING? PART 3
Perhaps of more interest to the collector than the general dictionaries are the dictionaries of Australian slang, colloquialisms and vulgarisms. Those compiled by Sidney Baker and the Macquarie University Dictionary Research Centre have already been mentioned earlier, but this sort of work began much earlier than that, as we saw from James Hardy Vaux’s very … Continue reading AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH: A NEGLECTED AREA OF AUSTRALIANA COLLECTING? PART 2
SOME TIME AGO my friend, Bryan Welch, sent me an email asking would I like an Australian bookplate for "Kathrine" [sic] Shaw of "Wooriwyrite" and, as a collector of such, I naturally said "yes". The name Wooriwyrite was unknown to me so I set out to find out more about the person and the town. … Continue reading An Australian bookplate