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Has any Australian English become incorporated into Japanese as gairaigo? Or would most Japanese people only be exposed to Australian English from Australian-made shows such as "The Crocodile Hunter"?

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  • I can't think of any Australian words in Japanese except of course animal names and place names. (I'm Australian and have been to Japan numerous times)
    – hippietrail
    Sep 4, 2011 at 11:09

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I am personally not aware of any Australian gairago. Being Dutch I looked at imported words before due to rangaku in the 17th century, followed by importing some Portuguese and later massive English import of words. And nowadays the eyes and ears are very focused on US English to the point where speaking with an Australian or UK English accent actually makes it more difficult for Japanese to understand you.

I guess the only Australian import words will be limited to the standard kangaroo, koala, dingo, and so on. But I am not sure if we can call that real Australian English (due to these words coming from Guugu Yimithirr, Dharuk)?

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    +1 for the shout-out to non-English Australian languages. Although, it'd be fair to argue that kangaroo, koala etc. are English now (just as コーヒー is Japanese) and so unless you can find evidence that they were imported directly from the source, it would be acceptable to treat them as loans from English.
    – Matt
    Sep 4, 2011 at 23:37
  • I am sure people treat them as native English words nowadays, just like tsunami entered English from Japanese. I am in no way authoritative in the field, so I wanted to at least be a bit careful in my claims. I guess any deeper research into the topic would be to identify words that can be called true Australian English and see how these are used in Japanese. But maybe Jim Breen (of Monash/JDICT) already has done some research into this area. Time to send him an email and see what he has to say.
    – asmodai
    Sep 5, 2011 at 14:30
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    Jim Breen responded to me with the following: "Apart from the usual crop of animal, etc. names, I am unaware of any particularly Australian words that have become 外来語." I hope that fully answers your question, Andrew.
    – asmodai
    Sep 6, 2011 at 10:01
  • オージー is derived from the Australian English slang word "Aussie".
    – Andrew Grimm
    Jul 23, 2012 at 9:04

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