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From: Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org>
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Inkhorns are a fascinating linguistic phenomenon, ...
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2024 21:08:04 +1000
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On 17/09/24 16:44, Silvano wrote:
> Peter Moylan hat am 17.09.2024 um 01:32 geschrieben:

>> That reminds me of an incident in an earlier job of hers, when she
>>  worked in a psychiatric hospital. A small town north of Newcastle
>> had had no doctor for a long time, but Australia has a policy of
>> getting immigrant doctors out to rural areas, so they finally got
>> someone. That doctor sent one of his patients down to the psych
>> hospital for assessment. The clinical notes said that he was
>> obsessed with attacking birds.
>>
>> When interviewed, one of the first things he said was "Stone the
>> crows, I don't know why they sent me here."
>
> I assume that "stone the crows" is a common idiom in that part of
> Australia. 1) What does it mean? 2) Do native speakers of other
> varieties of English know and use that idiom?

Good questions. It's an Australian expression, and more specifically
from the language of rural areas rather than the cities. I believe it's
understood in England, although the English clearly view it as an
Australianism. I have no idea whether it is also known in the rest of
GB&Ireland. It is probably not understood in North America, except among
those exposed to a lot of Australian literature.

Meaning: it's a general expression of surprise or incredulity. An
approximate equivalent is "Bloody Hell".

Etymology: nobody is sure. It could derive from times when farmers hired
people to throw stones at crows who were damaging the crops, but
personally I can't see how that would evolve into an expression of
surprise. I suspect that it's just a phrase that someone made up, and
adopted by others who found it colourful.

> By the way, congratulations to Australia. Here in Germany we are very
> slowly starting to understand that interpreters should be provided to
> patients and hospital cleaners or the patient's minor children are
> definitely not the best solution, especially when talking e.g. about
> sexual diseases or a life-threatening cancer.

Australia is a nation of immigrants. Initially, mostly from the British
Isles, but with some exceptions. (For example, I gather that a dialect
of German survived in the South Australian wine region long after it had
died out in Germany.) In the mid-20th century, though, there was massive
migration from many European countries.. As a student in the 1960s I
lived in Melbourne, which for some reason was the major entry point for
immigrants, and it fascinated me to listen to the different languages
being spoken as I walked through the city. I used to try to guess which
language was being spoken. I was probably right most of the time,
because the dominant languages (Italian, Greek, Dutch, Serbo-Croat,
Polish, etc.) had distinctive sounds that distinguished them from one
another.

As a result, it's normal that government pamphlets are issued in, often,
as many as 20 languages. Those languages are chosen on the basis of
statistics of how many Australian residents speak which language.
Initially these were mostly European languages. (Maltese is the main
exception I remember.) These days the list is rather different. It
starts with English, Mandarin, Arabic, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Punjabi,
Greek, Italian, Hindi, ... .

I see from googling that the explicit introduction of medical
interpreters in NSW started in 1976 (later than I would have guessed).
Initially in Sydney, but it spread to other cities. In the bigger cities
like Newcastle there's a central interpreter service, that can be
contacted by hospitals, medical practices, etc., and that has a "pool"
of available interpreters that can be called in as needed. Elsewhere,
the main interpreter support is by telephone.

-- 
Peter Moylan       peter@pmoylan.org    http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW