Dinky-di Aussies: how slanguage helped form a new national identity

[barryqwalsh]

They called it slanguage. A unique language developed by soldiers on the front during World War One. It was a creative fusion of Australian slang, blue words and bits of French and other foreign phrases.

Classic pieces of Australiana, such as “digger” and “dugout”, were coined in the trenches. Slanguage even gave us the term “Aussie” – a word originally seen by some as downmarket and lower-class.


Dinky-di Aussies: how slanguage helped form a new national identity