Reaction To Why do AUSTRALIANS have STRANGE ACCENTS?

Reaction To Why do AUSTRALIANS have STRANGE ACCENTS

This is my reaction to Why do AUSTRALIANS have STRANGE ACCENTS

In this video I react to Australian language by learning about the origins of the Australian accent.

[maryblackman]

States do have different accents. I come from Queensland and while holidaying in Tasmania, with my husband. The lady in next camp-site said she knew we were from Queensland because she heard me talking on the phone.

[judileeming]

I think most Australians sound the same when speaking informally. Most of us know how to speak “properly “ and can formalise our accent when the occasion demands it. I have noticed that there has been an Americanisation creeping in over the last 30 years. My daughter as a child didn’t understand that “Maya” is not how you pronounce “Mayor”. I have spent over 50 years married to a Yorkshireman and he only hears Australians speaking so I have had to translate when we visit the UK because his ear doesn’t pick up the accent easily anymore. He loves cable TV because he can watch UK programming. It is truth (‘s’truth) that he has to turn on the [CC] closed captions whenever he watches his UK dramas because they speak too fast and/or softly for him to absorb what he is listening to.

[tonstril]

I’m a west Aussie with natural accent. However I find it very easy to mimic all UK dialects. We always have many dialects fresh off the boat as UK migrants are welcomed. So I hear them everywhere.

[queeng]

ppl say they can tell the accents from state to state here but i cant. i speak Strine which tis considered basically ignorant australian but its just who i used to hang out with growin up lol xxx <3

[candycanessongs]

I have Scottish relations with full accents and Irish, I can understand the dialect with ease (spoken, not written). You can see how over the passage of time the heat really slows it all down.

[siryogiwan]

you notice it if you travel around, there's quite a difference in how some things are said and the slang we use

[kyliedavies]

As an Australian I think this is a large part of it. There’s a lot of cockney in it to my ear which makes sense as they emptied out the London gaols to send convicts here. My convict ancestor (3 x great grandfather) came from Maidstone Kent. Stole a sheep at 16yrs old. But also I have read the hot dry weather influenced over time how we keep out mouths a bit more closed while we talk. That changes the sound slightly. Also my dad’s older family had a few aboriginal words in their everyday lingo and I have read that up until about the 1890s there was a lot more social mixing between working class whites and indigenous people (then some heinous laws were brought in leading to the white Australia policy) so I think there’s some aboriginal language influence there too way back.

[claireeyles]

I think the South Australian accent is probably one of the most distinctive in Australia. You can usually make an educated guess as to whether someone is from South Australia (or the capital city, Adelaide) by listening to the way we pronounce particular words. Despite having lived in Melbourne for the past 7 or so years I still have a very strong South Australian accent. Over the years this has lead people to think I was British; to have actual British people trying to work out what part of England my accent was from, because they couldn't quite place it; to have people be surprised that I knew a fairly extensive amount of rhyming slang (apparently I sound a bit posh, so I'm not meant to be converse in something like rhyming slang); and have had people (usually from other States) assume that I had a more upper class upbringing, when I grew up in a very working class family.

[FionaEm]

What interests me is where our accent has settled. With all those influences, you'd think we might have come out sounding Brummie rather than somewhere between Cockney and today's standard southern British. Also, the accent is reasonably uniform across a huge country with hundreds of kilometres between capital cities that have the largest population concentrations. That said, ppl from Adelaide often have a distinctive British inflection. They like to say it's because they weren't a convict settlement - but neither was Melbourne.

Non-Anglo Aussies like Indigenous ppl and descendants of Italian, Greek and Lebanese sometimes also speak with an inflection that reflects their origins. On top of all that, it seems that some younger Millennials and Gen Z's speak with a tinge of English & American that we older ones generally don't have. It's all quite fascinating.

[nolaj]

I watched a film clip recently with Little Edie (Grey Gardens), an American with an upper class sounding 'trans-Atlantic' accent. Some of her words and phrases were very Australian to my ears, so much so I thought she sounded like Cate Blanchett! I found that interesting as I haven't really heard similarities with an American accent before.

[utha]

There are some subtle regional differences but with the population far more mobile these days it gets averaged far more quickly. The same goes for other regions around the world too, as people migrate and move about the language and accent gets standardised faster.

[Malaka-rp]

Yeah i grew up in the east of Melbourne vic and work with those who grew up in the western suburbs and we have a slight difference in accent most notably noticed by an Irish guy who works with us today.

[redhammer]

I think it's more to do with how words in a physically evolutionary context are naturally formed in the mouth and throat. If you asked an Aussie to mimick a European accent the two standouts would be the Irish and Londoners.

[bernadettelanders]

Victorian Aussie here, people from South Australia seem to have a very slight English accent to me. Yes accents are funny things lol, Americans have so many different accents as well.
I remember some Aussie news readers or tv announcers on here many years ago seemed to have a slight English accent. I was born a Stuart with Scottish ancestors, I don’t sound that at all lol. I sound normal 😂. Accents and totally different languages all over the world are fascinating when u think about it. Where did different languages come from 🤔?

[nolaj]

Australian accents don't vary much from state to state though we have some different words for things, e.g. some Eastern staters call a particular luncheon meat 'devon' and a swimming costume could be 'swimmers' or 'cossies' but we West Aussies call these 'polony' and 'bathers'.
Also, watching Superwog you would have heard that their accent is different - ethnic Australian I suppose you would call it.

[helixator]

Government school accents in Australia cities now have a different accent for when I was a kid. For example some of the vowels sound a bit like the Italians/Greeks did, while the broader Australia sounds have largely been replaced by the middle or educated Australian accent. Additionally so many of the newer arrivals carry traces of their old accents, or that of their parents. Accents evolve and I quite like it.

[genie]

I have been mistaken for an English person but I'm 6th gen West Australian. There are definitely big variations in accent and pronunciation of words in Australia.

[gusdrivinginaustralia]

State to state some subtle variation. South Australia with LEGO . Queenslanders throw 'ay' on the end of questions, sometimes, less these days.
More around country and city. Or economic and cultural variance.

[anEyePhil]

There are significant differences between Melbourne and Sydney accents and, indeed, attitudes to Australian history and governance. I’m a Sydneysider, so my accent is more “convict” than those up-themselves Melbourne posh wannabes. These words are very different between the two cities -

Castle - Melburnians use the “at” form of the vowel, like USA English, whereas Sydneysiders use the “are” form of the vowel, like Londoners.
Balcony - Melburnians pronounce it “bellcony” for some strange reason. Sydneysiders get it right, they just say “balcony”, again like proper English.
Bell - Bell St is a major road in Melbourne, but they say it “Bal St”, as in Al Street.

Finally, Victorians never got over the fact that Sydney was the “Foundation City” and the British colony of New South Wales was the “Foundation State” of Australia, including the entire East half of the continent and Tasmania (then Van Diemans Land). Sydney and New South Wales were founded on January 26th 1788. The District of Port Phillip was administered by the New South Wales Colonial office until the British created a new Colony “Victoria” in 1851 - sixty-three years after New South Wales. Subsequent Gold Rush activity created the wealth of Victoria and Melbourne. So Sydney and New South Wales originated in the Georgian era, while Victoria and Melbourne are Victorian era. This is reflected in the Georgian architecture of Sydney (St James Church, Hyde Park Barracks) which is absent from Melbourne.
Finally, Sydney hosts the oldest and most extensive museum of Australian biology, art and culture, patronised by David Attenborough, the Australia Museum. It is a fabulous authentic original resource. Sydney also has the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
When Melburnians established their Art Gallery they called it “The National Gallery of Victoria”. They never got over the fact that Melbourne was never made into the National Capital of Australia. Sydney and Melbourne competed for this title, in the end Canberra was invented in the hilly bush land at green origins of the Murrumbidgee River. The a National Territory is extracted from an area of New South Wales. So I don’t know what is “National” about a Victorian Art Gallery, but if it keeps them quiet, no worries 😉.

[shaneb]

Aussie English does a few video's on the different Aussie accents. From cultivated, general & broad accents, where he gives examples of the different types of accents. Nowadays there is more than those 3, you also have Indigenous, Wog & blended accents (for example). Being a lot more US driven our accents are become Americanised. It's been noted that young children in the US & other parts of the English speaking world, are developing an Aussie accent due to the popularity of the cartoon "Bluey".