Some of my proof readers for A Fox Of Storms And Starlight are both not Australian, and not familiar with the way Australians talk about trees, both singularly and collectively. So I wrote this note to go in the front of the book, and because it amused me, I thought I’d share 😀
A Note For Non-Australians
Australians like to abbreviate everything. McDonald’s becomes Maccas, a service station becomes a servo, the Prime Minister becomes ScoMo. We’re yet to meet a word we can’t make shorter in some way, even if it’s just by refusing to pronounce half its vowels—and similarly, why use three different words for three different concepts when a single word will do?
Thus, in this book, you may encounter some bushes: green, leafy things also known as shrubs.
You will also encounter the bush: a generic, collective term used in much the same way as ‘forest’ or ‘woods’, but pertaining to the specific, particular eucalyptus biome of Australia.
You’ll encounter eucalyptus trees, which can also be called eucalypts if there are more than one of them, because that’s really just eucalyptus trees –> eucalypt’s, the same thing but with the ‘us tree’ part missing.
Or, more likely (because there are still far too many vowels and syllables in ‘eucalypts’), you’ll encounter gum trees, which honestly are usually just gums.
Gums have smooth bark and rough back, pale bark and brown bark and dark bark, long, slender leaves and round, coin-shaped leaves and are olive green or blue green or red green or just green, and good luck telling most of the species apart because even most tree experts can’t reliably do that.
They’re gums, okay? It’s short, there’s only one vowel, and it’s a nice, flexible word.
Welcome to Australian linguistics.