Do you still speak/write Australian?

As a writer and editor, I'm frequenting a place between several different types of English, not just colour vs color, but phrasing too. So I shouldn't be surprised by the response to yesterday's blog post.

I wrote this sentence on this blog yesterday:

"We just dropped by some friends who are leaving in a few days."

Someone pointed out that this isn't Australian English. Um, obviously I'm getting somewhat mixed in my Englishes, because I didn't see it at all, neither does my husband. My friend said she would have said, 

"'dropped into a friend's place/house".

Well, they live in an apartment, so I wouldn't have said "house". But as for 'by' vs 'into', I cannot remember that one is Australian and the other isn't. What do you Aussies out there think?

At least I didn't say, "visited with our friends".

And talking about different Englishes, you'd be surprised to hear our children speak. They are now sounding somewhat American. A fact that was underlined at conference when Scottish friends pointed it out and then our boys talked on Skype to a former student of David's . . . a long-time-ago student from those early teaching days in Australia. He also commented on their lovely American accents.

I'm sure we'll have some very shocked relatives when we return to Australia. Others too. Many won't understand and will probably be quite critical, even if not to our faces. After all an American accent is not a valued commodity in Australia. 

But there isn't much we can do. The American accent is infectious. Spending our days correcting their accents/phraseology isn't my idea of a fun parenting activity and it isn't likely to improve our relationships with them either. Although I do object to being called "Mom" and restrain myself from using "fourths" instead of "quarters"; I try to keep my peace about other words.

It just isn't a mountain worth fighting over, no matter how many comments we'll receive when we return to Australia. In the end neither we nor our kids will ever be "pure" Australian ever again (whatever that is!).