When I was about 8, and was on one of those YMCA school holiday activity camps, I heard a word that I'd never heard before...
An earnest young man with a guitar strummed and sang something that sounded like a hippie tune...
"Koombahyaah..."...
Not wanting to show my ignorance, I didn't ask what the word meant...
And so, for many years I thought it was a Sanskrit word, borrowed and incorporated into the song...
It seemed like a reasonable enough explanation...
Many years later, and about 10,000 miles away, I was leaning against the gate of a sheep farm not far from York, in the UK, watching a farmer put his dog through it's paces with a small mob of sheep...
"Koombahyaah..." he said, and the dog guided the sheep towards him...
I asked him what the word meant, and he looked at me, blankly, for a moment, then smiled, pinched his nose and said "Come by here" with a broad, nasal twang... "That's how you'd say it in Australian", he said, chuckling...
That answered that question, ha ha...
All this time I'd thought it was some strange, exotic word from a far off land, and if you think about it, I really wasn't that far off the mark, ha ha...
🙂
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