In the present day, when words are more and more abbreviated,
a "short title" may be counted necessary to the welfare of a
book. For this reason "Austral English" has been selected.
In its right place in the dictionary the word <i>Austral</i>
will be found with illustrations to show that its primary meaning,
"southern," is being more and more limited, so that the word
may now be used as equivalent to <i>Australasian</i>.
"Austral" or "Australasian English" means all the new words and
the new uses of old words that have been added to the English
language by reason of the fact that those who speak English
have taken up their abode in Australia, Tasmania, and New
Zealand. Hasty inference might lead to the remark that such
addition is only slang, but the remark is far from being
accurate; probably not one-tenth of the new vocabulary could
fairly be so classified. A great deal of slang is used in
Australasia, but very much less is generated here than is
usually believed. In 1895 a literary policeman in Melbourne
brought out a small <i>Australian Slang Dictionary</i>. In
spite of the name, however, the compiler confesses that "very
few of the terms it contains have been invented by
Australians." My estimate is that not one word in fifty in his
little book has an Australian origin, or even a specially
Australian use.
The phrase "Australasian English" includes something much wider
than slang. Those who, speaking the tongue of Shakspeare, of
Milton, and of Dr. Johnson, came to various parts of
Australasia, found a Flora and a Fauna waiting to be named in
English. New birds, beasts and fishes, new trees, bushes and
flowers, had to receive names for general use. It is probably
not too much to say that there never was an instance in history
when so many new names were needed, and that there never will
be such an occasion again, for never did settlers come, nor can
they ever again come, upon Flora and Fauna so completely
different from anything seen by them before. When the
offshoots of our race first began to settle in America, they
found much that was new, but they were still in the same North
Temperate zone. Though there is now a considerable divergence
between the American and the English vocabulary, especially in
technical terms, it is not largely due to great differences in
natural history. An oak in America is still a <i>Quercus</i>,
not as in Australia a <i>Casuarina</i>. But with the whole
tropical region intervening it was to be expected that in the
South Temperate Zone many things would be different, and such
expectation was amply fulfilled. In early descriptions of
Australia it is a sort of commonplace to dwell on this complete
variety, to harp on the trees that shed bark not leaves, and
the cherries with the stones outside. Since the days when
"Adam gave names to all cattle and to the fowl of the air and
to every beast of the field" never were so many new names
called for. Unfortunately, names were not given by the best
educated in the community, but often by those least qualified
to invent satisfactory names: not by a linguist, a botanist, an
ornithologist, an ichthyologist, but by the ordinary settler.
Even in countries of old civilisation names are frequently
conferred or new words invented, at times with good and at
times with unsatisfactory results, by the average man, whom it
is the modern fashion to call "the man in the street." Much of
Australasian nomenclature is due to "the man in the bush"
--more precise address not recorded. Givers of new names may
be benefactors to their language or violators of its purity and
simplicity, but in either case they are nearly always, like the
burial-place of Moses, unknown.