kat said:
and solmu...it is not rare for australians to speak languages other than english..I speak two languages, my mother speaks 6...and I know plenty of australians who are bi and multi lingual.
It's not as rare as I thought, but it's still uncommon. The "I know plenty of" argument never holds any water - anecdotal evidence is not particularly meaningful.
According to the ABS almost 16% of people speak a language other than English at home (I have no idea how that compares to other countries). I admit that's more than I would have thought. Finding information on second languages etc. is a lot harder, but even after looking at those stastics I'd say the majority of Australians are not fluent in more than one language. Perhaps "rare" was a poor word choice though.
I may be wrong, and if you do happen to have the stats on multi-language fluency I would certainly be interested in being corrected. At any rate, it's not particularly relevant.
Frankly everything I said in my first post should be taken with a large grain of salt. I was pissed off, and consequently acting overly glib. I know nothing in that post was of any real consequence, so I apologise if it offended.
monkeylantern said:
To be far, Australia has one of the sharpest fashion eys in the world.
Certainly. It's my opinion though that Australia doesn't invent fashions, but rather follows them (mainstream Australia anyway - I've seen fantastic original work coming from Melbourne fashion designers, but it rarely catches on with the general populace (or overseas)). Australia does have the advantage that rather than being stuck following one school of fashion (i.e. only Milan, only Paris, etc.) it takes in an eclectic mix, and it does so, as you say, on the bleeding edge.
I just don't think fashions
originate here, so what works elsewhere should work here.
Again, happy to be corrected - I don't have any particular investment in the notion, it's just an opinion.
