Answering an Age Old Question
We say capsicum instead of pepper, snow peas instead of mange tout, zucchini instead of courgette and eggplant instead of aubergine, but we also say soccer instead of football: these are the subtle differences of language 'down under', and I've been coaching Ed Freyfogle for his upcoming trip so he won't need a translator. And ever on the look out for people doing interesting things with maps, I found that the guys at floatingsheep have mapped out instances of uses of both words as placemark keywords in an attempt to pass a defining verdict on which is the more correct name for that game with the black and white ball and the off-side-rule. On Wikipedia there are 21 pages worth of argument over this, so it's obviously a pressing issue for quite a few people...
What they haven't fully taken into account is that in Australia football means something else – it's the one with the men in the short shorts who kick the ball a lot isn't it? So while their map is quite interesting as far as the over all linguistic debate it also serves to suggest that in Australia at least it's not the name of the game that we're in two minds about, it's which one we prefer – and apparently its the one with the shorts and kicking. Unless it's people miss-naming the one with the big men and the running with the ball, or people adopting the name Association Football to mean soccer.
Taking it one step further they've then taken into account for what the 'beautiful game' is referred to in other languages:
And interestingly they've found a reference to German fussball in Victoria... So I'm just going to tell Ed that if people don't understand him just to use hand signals or point – or else to lapse into German...
If you're interested in meeting Ed he's going to be visiting both Syndey and Melbourne, so get in touch if you're in either city.
