Description
“To open Lost for Words up at any page is to invite an onrush of childhood memory, tinged with melancholy that so many of these colourful expressions are being driven out of usage by the unstoppable march of American-accented global English.” Annie Warburton, Hobart Mercury
Language tells us who we are: because we are the words we use.
If we adopt the language of another society we lose our rights of memory in our own kingdom. The first time I realised Australia had lost its lingo was when I was writing a memoir about growing up in the 1940s and 1950s. To capture the era, I had to remember the phrases and words we used back then because most of them had disappeared from view. Readers wrote from all over Australia surprised that their parents had spoken just like mine in Brisbane. And they recalled other phrases that I’d forgotten: It’s snowing down south. I’d know his hide in a tannery. Know him? I’d know his bones in a stew. He’s all mouth and trousers.
Lost for Words is not Banjo Paterson or Bazza McKenzie or the bush, but rather the language of 1950s urban-dwelling Australians. It is not exclusively Australian; but it is how we spoke.
Condition: Lightly used condition.
Author: Hugh Lunn
All sales are final / as is.