1/04/2025...

When I read your comment, I thought, "What's January 4, 2025, got to do with this drawing?" Then, I remembered that most people in Europe (and the rest of the world, as far as I know) write their dates as day/month/year. Now, I know what you're saying.

I was wondering who would be the first to find that date configuration confusing.

Yeah, an Aussie here. Right-hand drive cars, Zed instead of Zee, tomato pronounced tuh·maa·tow, petrol instead of gasoline, tap instead of faucet, Autumn instead of fall, garbage bin instead of trash can, rock melon instead of cantaloupe, footpath instead of sidewalk, torch instead of flashlight, nappy instead of diaper, dummy instead of pacifier, etc, etc, ect.

I live in the place where  Flinters ' DNA was sourced. If I stick my head out the bedroom window I can see much of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Maybe if I put enough mint chocolate atop it he'll come here.

a surprising amount of those words are in the american english. Really depends on the area in the USA

Thanks. I was about to say that, too.

Like you guys said, it depends on the area in the USA, and which cultures most heavily influenced regional dialects. There's a fascinating documentary called "The Adventure of English" by The Hon Lord Melvyn Bragg, CH HonFRS FRSL FBA. When he talks about the history of American English he notes that during the early colonial days, schooling was so strict that the average American spoke better English than the average person back in England itself.

Australia was originally populated by convicts, soldiers and farmers, with their particular cultural mannerisms influencing our modern speech. Words like "kidding" for joking originated among the convicts. As for the vernacular of Rocko the Wallaby, nobody here has said "cobber" in decades, Steve Irwin was one of the few Aussies to regularly say "crikey", my grandfather would frequently say "blimey", but that and "bonza" are only really used as references to a bygone age. Many Americanisms are permeating modern Aussie speech; only a few weeks ago two news anchors on an Australian TV network said "Zee" instead of "Zed" and I've heard people in shopping centers use "diaper" and "pacifier", hence those words came to mind when I posted above.

Like most other countries, it also depends on which social class you belong to. Such as the upper class Australian English spoken by people like Cate Blanchett, middle class Australian English, spoken by someone like myself, or bogan spoken by our version of trailer trash.

@Sashathana, I would be most interested to know which of the words I used are commonly used in the USA, and in which states.

Mostly I have been in the south eastern states, from the east side of Texas over.
tomato pronounced tuh·maa·tow, That one is pretty common. It is something even the English experts cannot agree on.

tap instead of faucet, I hear both a lot. A fair amount of professionals prefer tap over faucet. It tends to be a more "technical" term.

Autumn instead of fall, here, the two words are interchangeable.

garbage bin instead of trash can, garbage bin in more common in urban areas. Also mostly used for outside receptacles. where trash can tends to be the smaller indoor recepacles

footpath instead of sidewalk, some cities use footpath, some use sidewalk.

nappy instead of diaper, this one, it's more based on what you use. Cloth re-washable diapers are nappies, the one use throw away ones are diapers.

Thks!

You're right about who settled where in the "colonies". Most of the people who settled in the southern U.S. were from England and most who settled in the north/northeast were from Scotland and Ireland. I remember reading something a long time ago that said Southern Americans can understand the English accent easier than Northerners could due to the fact that the Southern accent sounds a lot like the English accent. I don't know if it's true or not but that's the story I read.

I grew up around the Creole and Acadian French peoples.

You spoke dem Cajun, den? I was a BIG fan of Justin Wilson and learned to speak the Cajun accent from listening to him all the time.

Do you still need a criminal record to move to the outback? I'm thinking of digging for opals. The stone, not the automobile...

Here in the Southern U.S., we use many of the same words that are used in the British Commonwealth. For example, we use autumn as much as fall, and I was almost grown before I found out that it isn't a tap in the U.S. but a faucet. Oh, and as I was in the military, I tend to write my dates as day, month, and year, although I spell the month rather than use the monthly number.

As a Programmer/Systems Analyst, I use the convention YYYY-MM-DD because it makes it much easier to sort by date. 2025-04-01 will confuse most other folks.

Yeah. I would have been scratching my head for a few minutes before I figured out what you were saying. LOL.

I use that convention a lot too, particularly for saving files. Both at work and at home. It does indeed make sorting by date easier.

(* nods, nods *)

ohh boy i think this time flintters steped on it , i wonder if red will make him look from the inside as she stuffes him through where the sun doesnt shine

Anything's possible in a fight cloud.

Personally if Red told me I was the father of her foal I would be doing handsprings and passing out cigars!

Start drawing zeros.

that's awesome, we can get milked together

Kid? But he's not a goat...

I hope you (ahem) expand Red’s situation. At some point it should swell out of her control and place Flinters in tons of trouble.