Fork the Language

In software development, teams of people work off of a common base. Hopefully, but not necessarily, some kind of version control is used. Under version control, individual developers can freely modify the common base and then check back in their code. If everything works, great! If not, the modifications can always be rolled back. Whenever there is an upcoming release of production code on a larger software project, it is usually necessary to create separate branches or fork the code. One team works to get the production version as stable as possible while a different team works on a separate branch trying to put all the features that got pulled from the upcoming release without jeopardizing the release altogether. At some point, a merge will happen before the code is forked again.

When it comes to the English language, I realize that the language has been forked. I knew there were some differences between Australian English and American English, but I didn’t realize just how many differences there were. No one prepared me for brekky, spruiking, footy, reccos, the arvo, snags, barneys, utes, blokes, sheilas, or my favorite word in the Australian language - bogan. There is bogan pride and bogan love. Expressions exist like, “That’s so bogan!” and none of it made any sense to me. Slowly, by using context clues, Julie and I started to make sense of it all, but that was not before my greatest misunderstanding of all happened.

I was minding my own business getting a glass of water in the kitchen. The new guy, Jonathan, walked in and we had a quick conversation. During the conversation, he said something about him and his partner. In American English, the word “partner” can be used in one of two ways. The first, is for a business partner, as in, “My partner and I are looking to expand a bit. We should probably find a bigger office.”

The second use of the word partner is by the gay community. Since, as a group, they have been prohibited from marriage but wanted to convey a sense of seriousness about their relationship with their significant other. Gays have used the word “partner” to convey a higher level of commitment than the words “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” would imply.

While gays in America are fighting for marriage equality, it seems that Australians have somewhat shrugged their shoulders at the concept of marriage. I sat next to a girl who has been engaged for six years. I remember when she told me just how long her engagement had been lingering, I failed to suppress my jerk reflexes and simply said, “If you wanted to be married, you would be married by now.”

“That’s not it. I just have a lot going on right now.”

“Really? What’s going on that you don’t have time to get married? Are you religious and do you want a church ceremony?”

“No, neither of us are particularly religious.”

“OK then, all we need to do is find a suitable venue and an officiant. This will be a piece of cake. We probably should give your guests a little notice, so we can get this done next month if you want. Start sending out save the date emails now. If worst comes to worst, we can have the ceremony at my house. We need to get you a dress, order up some food, and tell your fiance to wear a suit. It’ll be awesome.”

By now, my victim had turned a lovely shade of red and politely declined my assistance. Now, almost a year later, she continues to live in sin with her partner. And that’s the Australian use of the word “partner” - used by heterosexuals to demonstrate a serious commitment on par and equal to marriage, but not involving, you know, getting married as the act of getting married is truly a calorie burner. I hate to sound like a crazed right-winger, but I have come to appreciate marriage a lot more after being in a society that does not value it. I am glad that Carson and Zoe will know that mommy and daddy gave it some thought and decided that we really liked each other and got married. It was not a case of we were living together and daddy didn’t want to look for a new place and then mommy got pregnant. The simple act of planning a wedding showed some commitment on our part and this is not an accidental life we are living.

Back to Jonathan... To make it worse, his partner’s name is Barbra. Of course, he shortened her name frequently to Barb. Yet to my American ears, the name “Barb” sounded an awful lot like “Bob”. My takeaway, Jonathan was in a very serious homosexual relationship with a nice bloke named Bob and was completely comfortable with it. Since he was comfortable with it, I thought I should be comfortable with it too. I filed away a mental note that Jonathan had a boyfriend named Bob and then didn’t run into Jonathan for quite a while.

The next time I did talk to him, I tried to impress him by showing that I was really listening during our last conversation. “Hey, Jonathan, how’s your boyfriend, Bob?” I smiled. Jonathan stopped smiling and I heard some crickets chirping. Yes, it was all a misunderstanding and it got funny pretty quickly, but this is just one small example of how the root language has been forked to the point where there was a pretty substantial misunderstanding.

As there is no form of entertainment worth watching besides American television and films, perhaps it is time to merge all these different branches of the language. Americans can take the good words like bogan and, in turn, give words like boondoggle and then we can go back to speaking the same language and avoid future mishaps until the language eventually forks again.