When traveling in ostensibly English-speaking New Zealand or Australia, one would be forgiven for thinking you could leave your travel phrase book behind. But that idea gets munted when a friend replies to my greeting, "How are you today?" with "Box of birds, mate, box of birds."
For those of you searching for your Kiwi-English phrase books, "munted" means destroyed or misshapen, and "box of birds" signifies that you're feeling just peachy. And if you think about it, "just peachy" is an equally puzzling answer to the question if your'e a Kiwi trying to figure out what this strange American is saying.
My Australian class responded like stunned mullets when I mentioned that one of their quilts was hung catywampus. It dawned on me that catywampus, a Southern colloquialism, might not be Standard English (and just wot is Standard English when she's at home, mate, you might ask, but we'll leave that for another discussion). When I explained that catywampus simply meant off-kilter, the class breathed out as one and said, "Oh, you mean squew-whiff?" Well, sure.
Sharon Patterson, a Nelson textile artist, understands that language and art can be cultural markers. The main image in her work, Hard Yakka, is the phrase, "I AM," a visual declaration borrowed from one of New Zealand's most famous paintings. Sharon's piece is a pearler. Though certainly not the first to appropriate imagery from Colin McCahon, arguably New Zealand's first Pakeha artist to produce work that didn't look like art from anywhere else, she has produced an accessible work about culture and personal identity. Worked on a grey wool blanket like those folded into every linen cupboard in this country, she tells us she is a textile artist using native materials. By employing McCahon's iconic "I AM," she locates herself in a line of NZ artists reusing iconic natinal imagery. And by stitching a colloquial monologue into that unyielding statement of identity, she is inviting us in on a conversation among the locals who have made a home and a language here on these isloated islands.
I carry a notebook with me so I can remember phrases from those conversations. From "rark up" to "a bit of a dag," they fill me with wonder at the expansiveness of the English language, and its ability to describe both the object in question and the identity of the speaker. How am I doing on this trip around one of my favorite places in the world? I'm just a box of fluffy ducks.
GLOSSARY
Stunned mullet: surprised
Hard yakka: hard work. Pronounced something like Hod Yacka. Middle "R"s here are more of a concept than a sound.
Pearler: Good, great. Pronounced Puhlah. See above.
Pakeha: I'm never sure if this just means non-Maori Kiwis, or specifically white Europeans.
Rark up: wind someone up, tell someone off. For pronunciation, again ignore that vestigial middle R.
Bit of a dag: hard case, comedian. The origins of this phrase puzzle me, as a dag is defined as the, um, fecal matter stuck to a sheep's bum. If someone tell you to rattle your dags, you're being instructed to get your rear in gear. Rattling said dags might be more visual imagery than you'd like to conjure up over your tea and pikelets.