Macca's: The Linguistic Benchmark, 10 April 2013

So sometime in the first few months I was here, there was this McDonald's ad on TV. I did not understand a word of it, no matter how many times I watched it. It happened to come on once when Steve and I were watching TV at his place. Here's the ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nILh3lFJiWU

When the ad finished, I looked at Steve and said, "I didn't understand a word of that."
"What?"
"That McDonald's commercial."
"What do you mean?"
"None of the words in that made any sense to me. The only reason I know it was for McDonald's was the big yellow M at the end."
"None of the words?"
"Nope. Not a one."
"Not even Macca's? You don't call it that in America?"
"Nope."

Yesterday, I had lunch with a colleague I met in Canada at the American Evaluation Association Annual Conference. She and I worked together for a few years on a Topical Interest Group for that organization - me in the US, her here in Australia. She's Australian born and raised. Over lunch, she asked how I'm adapting to life here. We talked about different things like the landscape, culture, language, and I told her about that McDonald's commercial. Being evaluators, we realized it could be a good test of how much language I have assimilated in my five months here. This morning I got an email from her with the YouTube version of the commercial so I could use it as my Aussie benchmark. I can understand about half. So if you want help with chokkers, ute, nan, mum, or pav mcflurry, I'm your gal.