It's just a general Australian thing of abbreviating anything with too many syllables by chopping as much as possible off the end and adding an "o"
Smoke break => smoko, Bottle shop => Bottle-o, garbage man => garbo
It's even more popular to do it with a "y" (football =>footy, present => prezzie, tantrum => tanty)
In this case it gets confusing because we call a gas/petrol station a "service station" which of course inevitably became the servo, I guess because servy sounded a bit too weird, even for us.
The online version of the most popular Australian dictionary, the Macquarie, is behind a login but my hardcopy version doesn't list servo anyway (although it does list other Oz colloquialisms like bludger). You can find references to it in the Collins[1] and also slang sites like KoalaNet[2]
[1] https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/servo [2] http://www.koalanet.com.au/australian-slang.html
"In Australian English, diminutives are usually formed by taking the first part of a word, and adding an a, o, ie, or y. Alternatively in some cases no ending may be added. While the form of a diminutive is arbitrary, their use follows strict rules. Diminutives are not used creatively.
For example, an ambulance paramedic is called an ambo, and is never pronounced ambie or amba. The use of the -ie ending, for example in bikie (a motorcycle club member), does not carry a connotation of smallness or cuteness as it does in other English dialects."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminutives_in_Australian_Engl...
No. The market for three row vehicles exists but is small, served mostly by a few mid-sized* SUVs with a third row only suitable for small children. Most people I know with families of 5 make do with two row vehicles.
The modal private car in Australia is a five door hatchback (Mazda 3, Toyota Corolla) closely followed by the compact* crossover (Mazda CX-5, Toyota RAV4, Subaru Forester). Work vehicles are dominated by "utes", which are small or medium* pickup trucks (Toyota HiLux, Ford Ranger).
Three door/two row cars used to be common as the base ("poverty") specification of some small economy hatchbacks—but it appears this trend has completely died away. Toyota's cheapest new vehicle is a five door, for example. Three door/two row hatchbacks are horrid things: worse for the customer in every respect and any cost savings probably offset by increased chassis development costs and SKU counts.
* Per the North American lexicon. Australia and the rest of the world sizes cars a bit differently.
Two of our last cars have been 7 seaters. Neither have been "buses", just a fold up seat in the boot section. Quite comfortable, even for an adult.
> The people I would expect to own a car with more than two rows of seats are families with 4+ kids, which is nobody here.
We're a family of 5, and whilst we can fit it a standard five-seater, as soon as we have a +1 which is fairly common with friends of our kids you either need two cars, or a 7 seater.
Self checkouts are definitely a thing here, although typically not in small grocery stores. Larger stores like Edeka, Real, Ikea, Hornbach have them where I live. I'm aware that even the small stores like AH in city centers have them in NL though, which is nice.
* I've been to supermarkets in Aachen, Bonn, Cologne, Darmstadt, Hamburg, Leipzig, and Stuttgart (and many smaller cities/towns/villages of course, but I guess there it would be less likely).
> Good to know you're human as well.
:-) You should ask a random Dutch(wo)man for their opinion of the trains' punctuality though. We totally envy Japan.
The statistics are alright though and it has improved quite a bit in the last decade (much like how O2 is seen as having a terribly mobile net by literally every German person, but after the fusion with E+ a few years ago it is statistically fine, and indeed, I often have full bandwidth when my colleagues on Telekom are complaining). Public perception is a fine art!
I have a pretty good experiencce with O2 also, but I'm aware that it can be completely unusable in rural areas. Luckily, I don't really leave the city boundaries much.
EDIT: I just remembered, I used to live in Karlsruhe, and the Real there also had a self-checkout. I haven't lived there since 2016, for what it's worth. Yeah, not sure why it's confined to larger stores. Perhaps not popular enough to warrant sacrificing cash register real estate in smaller stores for it. Germans don't like new things after all.
As for mobile networks, I think all of them are frequently unusable in rural areas. Between Aachen and Cologne (I most frequently travel there), which is not a quiet route, I think at least half the time there is 2G or nothing at all. I should measure that some time. My work phone (Telekom) doesn't have better reception than mine (Dutch network using O2). Without measuring, I would actually estimate that O2 is the better deal around here.
Of course, environmental reasons aren't my only reasons to not have kids but it is a nice way to stop doubting about it since I'm sure it's the right choice for the planet and everyone on it, even when I'm only leaning towards no personally.
I like four doors, but only two isn't too bad (drove one of those for five years). Seats though, is it normal to own a bus in Australia? The people I would expect to own a car with more than two rows of seats are families with 4+ kids, which is nobody here.
I've recently been thinking about a 2-seater to save on gas/CO2 since I have no kids anyway and you can always rent or borrow a car for that one time a year that you need it (since friends and family have 4-seaters, when we want to go somewhere, we can go with their car and pay for drinks or whatever). Of course, I'm in an exceptional situation with only a girlfriend and no plans for kids. I just can't help but wonder if this "4 seats is impractical" statement comes from being scared of "but what if I need it one day and then I don't have the option?" when logically, it is really much cheaper to rent a van once every four years than permanently own a huge car.
> The trains are so awesome in Germany
hah, try the Netherlands. Living in Germany for more than a year now, I think the trains here are quite crappy. Not unusable or filthy, but also not like the Netherlands. And the ICEs go 300km/h, not 250, and are very unreliable punctuality-wise.
Related: "You also won’t find automated checkouts [in Germany]." again, try the Netherlands :)
> it’s normal for all shops to be closed except for servos (there’s a confusing word for Germans)
Eh, I'll say. Servo(s) only exists in merriam-webster as well as the community-based dict.cc as I know it: a motor. Is this from a Brisbane dialect or something?