Imagine
the following situation: You get a scholarship or a grant to study English
abroad and you decide to go to Australia. Once you arrive there, you meet a lot
of people from different places around the world; however some of them are
Australians as many teachers are. One day, all of you decide to have a barbecue
and then, someone (one of the Australian boys) says: Please pass me the “Dead Horse”!!
What
does he mean by that? Certainly not to kill a horse and give it to him!! The
answer is much simpler than that. And the fact is that Australians use that
curious expression to refer to ketchup
or tomato sauce.
An
explanation of that expression may be that much Aussie slang (That is based on
British slag) involves a rhyming game. Thereby, following the phonology of
Australia, horse a sauce rhyme somehow.
Moreover, to avoid getting caught by surprise, Aussies
pronounce this expression as: dead ‘orse.
This is actually very funny! Now I know If I ever travel to Australia what this means!!
ReplyDeleteBut I'm not sure if I understood it correctly, is this a common phrase Australians use to refer to when asking for tomato sauce, or is it simply slang language?
I wonder if there's any historic meaning behind!
Anyway, Good job with your blog! and don't forget visiting us at www.thespiritofeire..blogspot.com.es
Very delayed reply to your question but I am one such Aussie and I thought I would answer your query. Now I actually wondered if it had any particular origin myself as it was something that was quite commonly used by most Australians having a bbq, I say was because I am in my early 30’s and it was most frequently heard while I was growing up but in more recent years it’s used much less often. I suggest this may be for three possible reasons, firstly the most simply answer is that words go in and out of fashion or trend, but I think it’s also because to many overseas people Australians have been stereotyped as the uncouth Aussie! Like Steve Erwin, what we would describe as Ocker, ie country hick, bit dim witted and this is not a particularly desirable trait for modern intelligent Australians and something most of us are very much not Ocker. I think the last possible reason is that as we have become more and more multi cultural we have taken the best Aussie traits and left behind the less desirable as we have taken on hopefully the best influences of our ever diverse society. We are the most successfully culturally diverse country in the world, the vast majority of Aussies are very accepting of pretty much everyone, despite what our ghastly government would suggest and though there will always be some racist people they are a tiny minority in our population. For most Australians, we take pride in how diverse our nation is and the average family meal includes recipes from equally diverse countries though we have our favourites such as Italian, French, Indian....(I love my curries) and all range of Asian nations being especially inclusive of Japan, China and Thai.
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