An apology to all my Australian friends–and to all of you

Seven new Australian friends are chattering away as they and this lone Canadian share our last El Salvadorian dinner.

I’ve already spent 5 days with these 7. Plus 2 more Aussies, 2 Kiwis, a Scot, a German, 2 other Canadians, and a Salvadorian guide.

I’m not surprised there are so many Aussies; we’re travelling with Intrepid, an Australian-based adventure travel company. For me, it’s completing the missing piece in my many years’ quest to do the complete route from Mexico to Colombia.

For most of them, it’s their first visit to Central America. And most are doing more than one of the six segments that make up this road trip. They’re not waiting the fifteen years it’s taken me to do the whole journey. But I digress . . .

They’re discussing their various word twists, abreviations, local expressions and “Aussie-isms.” Are they familiar with them? Am I? You see, they’re from all over their massive country: Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, Newcastle and who knows where else? They’ve all got different accents, different local variations. And they all talk fast!

Add to that, that one of them grew up in Scotland before moving down under 33 years ago (imagine that accent!). Another has lived there only 7 years since immigrating from England.

In these five days I’d already picked up on the vast differences in their accents, some much more difficult than others for my hearing aids to pick up.

I’m catching some of this conversation but certainly not all of it.

I’ve reached 1200 days on Duolingo, the language-learning app, trying to learn a bit of Spanish for this trip.

I should have studied Aussie instead!

More than six years ago, after a previous segment of my piecemeal junket through Central America that had also included several Aussies, I wrote in this space about the nuances of their lingo, how their language was somewhat akin to the English language.

I mispoke!

I need to apologize to my Aussie friends. It’s not that their language is somewhat akin to English. It’s that their languages are somewhat akin to English.

And I need to apologize to all of you. I hinted last time that my next post just might be from Costa Rica.

Well, I haven’t gotten there yet–still in El Salvador!

We have to get through Nicaragua first before arriving in Costa Rica.

Maybe next time!