Posted by Mike Field on March 01, 2008 at 23:29:00 from 203.129.47.171 user mikefield.
In Reply to: Re: The Missionaries posted by John Lambert on February 29, 2008 at 21:32:43:
No offence intended, John (Benedict.) The points I were making are that your Victoria is a residential centre (I apologise for calling it a town,) while ours is not, it's a State -- one moreover that, despite being the second-smallest Australian State, is still much the size of all England, just as Australia itself is much the size of all the US.
Ausralians generally have much greater affinity with Canadians than with Yanks -- the reasons for which are many, varied, and debatable (although probably not on TarBoard.) This perhaps explains why Aussies know there's a Canadian Victoria -- even if we do refer to it as a town....
I might add that I refuse to call Yanks "Americans" because there are a great number of American countries, only one of which is the US -- which country seems to outsiders at least to often think it is the only one. Having said that though, I should also say that I have some very good US friends (Yanks and Yankees,) but amongst the US population generally these people are atypical because they're non-parochial. Regrettably, non-parochial Yanks seem to form quite a small minority of the total US population -- hence my initial diatribe.
(By the way, the capital city of Australian Victoria is Melbourne. Aussies pronounce this as Melb'n, while Yanks pronounce it Mel-bawn and think it's in Florida.)