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  • Bardi grubs and frog cakes: South Australian words by Dorothy Jauncey
  • Jane Simpson
Bardi grubs and frog cakes: South Australian words. By Dorothy Jauncey. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. 244. ISBN 095517709. $25.

This engagingly written book is intended for the general reader. Dorothy Jauncey introduces 500 words and phrases used in the Australian state of South Australia (SA), which was founded in 1836. Her book follows others published by Oxford University Press, based on the Australian National Dictionary Centre’s (ANDC) large database of written Australian English, for example, The Australian national dictionary: A dictionary of Australianisms on historical principles (AND; ed. by William S. Ramson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) and others on Australian regionalisms. While the state boundary division may seem artificial, SA has been argued to constitute a separate area for lexical variation (e.g. Regional variation in the lexicon of Australian English, by Pauline Bryant, Canberra: Australian National University dissertation, 1992).

For each word or phrase J provides at least one example and an account of its history. The range of semantic domains is good—words for food are well represented and include jubilee cake and Kitchener bun, which did not make it into the AND. The discussion of words derived from Aboriginal languages improves on earlier work based on the ANDC database (Australian Aboriginal words in English: Their origin and meaning, by R. M. W. Dixon, W. S. Ramson, and Mandy Thomas, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). The words are discussed in seven thematic sections: words derived from Aboriginal languages, from the establishment of the colony, from the nineteenth-century Cornish miners and German settlers, from farming and wine-growing, from the settling of the remote areas, and from everyday life. A vivid portrait is drawn of the history of the state.

The widespread belief that there is little dialect variation in Australia (except for dialects of English spoken by Indigenous Australians) is borne out by the difficulty J has had in coming up with 500 words and phrases that are uniquely South Australian (apart from shibboleths like Murray magpie, pie floater, Salvation Jane, stobie pole). Her solution includes choosing:

  1. a. words that are no longer used (e.g. nineteenth-century land tenure terms). These will be of use to historians.

  2. b. place-names (e.g. the concentration camp Baxter, which she defines as ‘An abbreviation of Baxter Detention Centre, …purpose-built to house asylum seekers in Australia’ (169)).

  3. c. words first used in SA but now generally used (witchetty grub)

  4. d. words used elsewhere in Australia but important in SA (these include opal-mining terms, wine-growing terms, and some plants and animals, as well as phrases like fruit fly free, which is compositional in meaning). Some (e.g. camel trek) are general English. But generally these words and the discussion of them enhance the social and historical interest of the book.

  5. e. sets of related words, for example, noodle, noodler, noodling (an opal-mining term)

  6. f. words of Aboriginal languages reported in ethnographic and semi-ethnographic texts such as explorers’ books (e.g. marloo ‘kangaroo’).In this she follows the AND’s practice, although they have little currency outside the language group.

Some features limit the usefulness for linguists, but probably make it friendlier for a general audience. The examples given for each word are illustrative rather than being the earliest recording, and sources are not provided for much of the historical information. Pauline Bryant’s findings on regional variation are not discussed, although the peanut paste example is drawn from it. (This word is not distinctively South Australian; it is claimed as a Queensland word by the Peanut Company of Australia (www.pca.com.au/articles.php?rc 441).) Pronunciations [End Page 952] are only rarely given, and there are proofreading errors (the inventor of the stump-jump plough is referred to both as Robert Smith and as Richard Smith, Maryalyce McDonald is twice given as Marylyce), but this book is generally a pleasure to read.

Jane Simpson
University of Sydney
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