Language Barriers

Ok -- so you can enjoy in my confusion... here is another interesting thing I experienced just today.

"Arvo"

I saw a note that said " Will return this arvo..." and I thought I was misreading the note, or possibly the letters I was seeing weren't real. This moment of confusion and wonderment actually made me ask my in-laws what in the heck was an "Arvo".

So here I stealed myself to ask, got up the gumption to say something to Jill and very innocently said "Um, this may sound stupid, but what is an arvo?" To which she giggled quietly and said, "arvo is a very Australian word... it means afternoon." Then she turns to Alan (who as of yet hadn't heard my question) and said, "Alan, Gen want's to know what an arvo is." And of course he also chuckled and said, "afternoon of course".

Here I am learning a whole new language, and I thought we all spoke English, silly me.

FYI - with a quick search online you can find the history and definition of "arvo".
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ar⋅vo /ˈɑrvoʊ/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [ahr-voh]

–noun Australian Slang.

afternoon.

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Origin:
1930–35; af(ternoon) + -o, with voicing of -f-; ar is r-less speaker's representation of low back vowel

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.

Differences...

So a friend of mine asked for my opinion on culture differences between America and Australia. Oddly the biggest difference I have noticed may not even qualify as a culture difference, regardless here was the answer I gave...

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As for Australia... Culture here is sometimes very odd but they are much more like Americans than they would admit, and you will probably laugh but this is the biggest thing I noticed since coming here:

In America if you are shopping and you are walking in a mall or a store, you typically find that people stay to the right and make room to pass, or at least say excuse me when you are blocking their way, or they are blocking yours... Here there is no such automatic courtesy -- Americans walk like they drive, Australians walk wherever they damn well please and if they bump you in the process they seldom even say sorry or excuse me, it is weird. It's like it is your fault if you weren't getting out of the way fast enough for someone that is moving faster.

The funniest thing about this phenomenon is that all the grocery carts have wheels that allow the cart to move in any direction -- sideways, slant ways, etc. It's like they made the cart (which by the way they call a trolley) to fit the way people walk all over the place.

Logically I keep thinking, you drive to the left, you should walk to the left... but if you tried to walk to the left people would still run into you because they just don't think "Oh I should make sure to walk to the left, because I will avoid running into this other person who is walking at me" It's like that thought process does not exist.
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Now don't get me wrong, Australians are generally very polite people...

I think, however, when they are shopping it is a matter of focus and they tend to be more focused on what they want than who they are walking through to get it. There is nothing wrong with that, it is just not logical to me because I tend to move out of people's way and sadly I can't anticipate here which way someone will choose to walk around me the way I can guess in the states. Sure you still get bumped by people in the states, but usually they feel remorse, here they look at you like "why didn't you know where I was heading?" as if the bee line they were making should be the line I avoid. I am not a mind reader...