Before the laying of a great telephone cable to distant global precincts, Australians had developed a distinctly odd argot.
Long isolation had deprived them of verbal reassurances from the Fatherland.
From this uncertainly came a canting cadence that is not only impossible to understand even by English-speaking visitors to this fair and lucky country, but the mere sound of which sends foreigners into hysterical mirth.
Aussie travellers exhibit flocking behaviour abroad, not due to their inability to converse in exotic tongues but because they cannot be understood by other English-speakers, anywhere on Earth – although New Zealanders Kiwi patois is believed the only foreign language natively interpreted by Strine enunciators.
Strine (the word ‘Australian’ severely corrupted) is considered by phoneticists as the ugly duckling of spoken languages, the didgeridoo in a philharmonic orchestra, the note discordant in the symphony of Earthly tongues. A cracked wheel on the train of civilisation. A flat tyre on the information highway.
This has mixed repercussions for South East Asian regional affairs.
Some have it that Australians, with such defective diction, ought have spent their entire history at wars triggered by regular misunderstandings. Yet peculiarly, to the puzzlement of foreign affairs students, the opposite is true.
Though watery separation might explain Australia’s absence from neighbourly interdictions, the truth is that Australians inadvertently disarm potential foes and forestall inevitable offence and certain reprisal due to their calamitously comical cacophonic consonance.
The weight of stenographic evidence is now overwhelming that Asian war councils discussing how to punish the Land of the Great While Racist terminate in raucous hilarity when attention turns to the nasally-nuanced nettle at fault. Militaries are stood down, allies of shared disdain adjourn for refreshments with jovial sharings of Strine-flavoured anecdotes or diplomatic dictional indiscretions.
In secret, Asians suspect that Australians field their vocal fumbles as a negotiating ploy. The weird mob of this wide brown land of the Southern Cross are considered “Nemos of Negotiation,” a term derived from ancient Cantonese for “clown fish” and roughly interpreted as “arrogant galoot between east and west.”
It is extremely important that this information does not leak into the public domain.
Australians have a very brittle pride.