Oz, land of

I sometimes refer to Australia as “the land of Oz,” as do others.

In doing so, I may be sounding pretentious or just silly to some folks, so I think it might be a good thing to explain to everyone who reads this blog (as I explained to a few of you in an email recently) where that description originates.

Although I thought it might the first time I heard it, this way of referring to Australia has nothing to do with Dorothy and Toto wandering around the outback with a lion and a tin man looking for a wizard.

To explain it, you have to talk a bit about Aussie pronunciation, which is something we’ve come to appreciate gradually.

When we first arrived in Brisbane (which, by the way, rhymes with “tin,” not “pain”), we were describing the folks around us as “Aussies.”  We were correct, of course, but we were pronouncing the word “Awe-sees.”

That’s not how people here say it, but before we explain how the term is pronounced, we have to tell you something else we learned early on.  Here, “z” is pronounced “zed.”  I’ve heard that’s not true all over Australia, but it is here in Queensland, at least.  People say “… x, y, zed.”  The name of a bank here, ANZ, is pronounced “Ann zed.”

Maybe you knew that already, so I need to warn you that, in the very next sentence, I’m going to use an American “z” sound, not the local “zed” sound.

Aussies say “Aussie” as if it were spelled “Ahh-z.”  If you say that rapidly, and everybody here says nearly everything rapidly, it comes out “Oz-ee.”

Lots of words get shortened here, too, so the spoken “Oz-ee” became just “Oz.”

You’re right if you’ve already thought that we’re surely not in Kansas anymore.

How “land of” got attached, I’m not sure.

I have a theory, though, about how “antipodean” came to refer to Australia and New Zealand.  An “antipode” is a point opposite another point on the globe.  I expect British folk in the 1700s and 1800s, while colonizing this continent with prisoners, considered Australia and its people to be the exact opposite of the cultured homeland and its upstanding gentry.

So, saying something or someone was “antipodean” surely was not a compliment.  Now the tables are turned and, in the land of Oz, one doesn’t necessarily want to be known as a pomme (someone from England).

As John Douglas Pringle said in Australian Accent, “Australians are strongly pro-British but tend to dislike individual Englishmen, while they like individual Americans but tend to disapprove of the United States.”

I think I’ll get a lapel button that says “Individual American.”– Bob