Six years in.
You've stopped saying "sweet as."
It crept up quietly. The vowels shortened. "Y'all" slipped in. You started defending breakfast tacos to your mum on FaceTime. Somewhere along the way, the people who'd get the joke without you having to explain it stopped being in the room.
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I've spent six years in Dallas. I've started saying "y'all." I've defended breakfast tacos. My mum thinks I sound American. My American mates think I sound very Kiwi. Apparently I've been quietly building a third nationality this whole time.
Somewhere along the way I worked out something nobody had told me: the accent comes home faster around your own people than anywhere else. The job, the visa, the system — that part has a roadmap. The other part doesn't.
So I built one. Franzus Social. A monthly dinner club for Kiwis and Aussies in the US. No networking. No name tags. No dickheads. Just a small table of people who already get the shorthand, in a good restaurant, once a month, every month.
Words you used to say without thinking.
Dropped from your daily vocabulary. Still in the bones. Around the right table, they come back without you noticing.
- i."Sweet as."
- ii."Chuck a sickie."
- iii."Yeah, nah."
- iv.Jandals. Thongs.— never flip-flops.
- v."Heading to the dairy."— or the servo.
- vi."This arvo."
- vii.Togs.
- viii."Up at the bach."— or the shack.
