Some Aussie slang just doesn’t work any more, according to a new survey.

The recent study by Preply, an online language learning platform, found that the most annoying slang word was “sheila” denoting a girl or a woman.

It just doesn’t fly any more and about a third of people surveyed dubbed it the most annoying slang word, with “crikey” and “cakehole” following suit as highly annoying.

I better be more careful in future because I say crikey a lot. Maybe I should shut my cakehole. Oops.

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The most-favoured slang words are apparently “thongs”, “sunnies”, “brekkie” and “arvo”.

As a kid I spent seven years abroad in the then British colony of Hong Kong and we called thongs flip flops, which is English.

A thong is something very different to casual foot attire in some countries, but let’s not go there.

When I arrived back in Oz at the age of 13, I didn’t have a clue about Aussie slang. I had no idea what fair dinkum meant, I said hello, never G’day and it was all rather confusing.

But I got used to it and eventually embraced it.

Rude shock

I think it was Barry Humphries’ genius creation Barry McKenzie that really got me going. Expressions such as “dry as a dead dingo’s donger” caught my attention among others, some of which are frankly a bit rude.

I picked up Aussie slang as I went and embraced it. Some of it relates to England of course, like rhyming slang which emanated from the east End of London in the mid-19th century.

My father, who was born in London but spent most of his life in Australia, used rhyming slang liberally.

Often he would go for a “pickle and pork” (walk) up the “frog and toad” (road) for a “pig’s ear” (beer) at the rub-a-dub (pub) when the mood struck him.

He liberally mixed English slang with Aussie slang.

He owned a quarry when I was a teenager and I worked there in the school holidays and I learnt a lot more Aussie slang from the blokes who worked there although much of it is not for general consumption.

Working it out

The first day I went to work there the foreman said “G’day, what do ya know?”

I was confused. “What do I know about what?” I said and he looked puzzled.

I would always finish work early to go surfing and was told one day that I tended to “shoot through like a Bondi tram”. I love this vernacular.

And I picked up new expressions over the decades.

Early in my career I went to interview the well-known Brisbane stockbroker, the late Paul “Porky” Morgan, and I asked him how he was. I think he’d had a big night.

“I’m as crook as Rookwood,” he said and later I looked that up and realised it was a reference to a famous Sydney cemetery.

My brother lives in Canada and on visits there I have regaled his friends with Aussie English. They think it’s hilarious.

One of his mates was planning a visit to Australia and he took to writing them all down in a small notebook.

I wished I’d been there the first time he asked someone, in his strong Canadian accent, where the “dunny” was.