My favourite vowel: Oh NAUR explained!

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A story about koalas, mermaids and goats.

0:00 Introduction and quiz
0:44 Analysing 'going'
3:30 The GenAus GOAT vowel
6:05 New developments
11:51 Comparison with 'intrusive' r
12:57 Interaction with hard attack
14:27 Explanation in 3D

If you want to speak British English clearly and confidently, I recommend this course from accent coach Luke Nicholson:

[MIRobin]

I have to say, "This is what the new Australian goat is gliding towards" is an incredible sentence, with or without context

[das_it_mane]

This guy is passionate about stuff I didn't even know existed

[cb-au]

The “nauurr” clip 10:23 gave me Kath and Kim flashbacks! Such an amazing show along with their dramatisation of the Australia accent. “I want to be effluent, mum” and “Brett, I'm gonna make you your favourite meal tonight - rack off lamb”. So accurate and still has me in stitches. Goes to show how important context is when you hear a word and how it changes what you hear.

[jugbrewer]

if i told my partner "i love the the australian r-coloured goat vowel, " they would probably think i was having some kind of fever-induced episode

[Pingwn]

I love that this channel is the definition of descriptivism, you always analyse how people are actually talking and you never make a judgement on the different pronunciations but just describe it objectively.

[elmondo-se]

Makes me (a Scot) so incredibly happy to see you using an English flag for the English pronunciation instead of lumping us all under the union flag. Not that you would be so silly, of course. I honestly think all your Scottish accents are more Scottish than mine ahahah

[zedlewis_hobbies]

I'm gonna be honest, as an Australian I've been so confused what the hell all of these Americans were getting at identifying some phantom R. I pronounce my goat glide in the same way as you described initially, and have never heard an 'r' out in the wild for the same sound.

But then you showed me that those very clear rhotasised sounds from the start of the video were the same o's I'd heard and gone "see, no r's!" initially. Insane. You made me hear it!
And I hate you for it :) <3

[thedofflin]

As an Australian, this sounds specifically like a Northern Beaches accent, and more specifically women from there. I'd say it plays a similar role to the 'valley girl' accent.

[LorraineVirginie]

The fact he can so smoothly pronounce all those words in the English, Australian, and American accents, and not even in a sentence, is absolutely incredible to me.

[Aboogidyboogidy]

This is amazing. I'm Australian and was completely hoodwinked into thinking it was a US southerner, but once you told me that the written words were a lie I could understand each of them as the Aussie pronunciation

[chrissimon]

Obviusly the title made the quiz at the start easy, but the word "blur" was the one that made it clear to me at least.

[nerdycus]

That '...pushing the vowel's glide trajectory further down under.' is worth hitting subscribe.

[MizaBrega]

As a young Australian, I've been confused about where all the aur naur had been coming from, so this is somewhat enlightening. I'd never heard it in my own accent, the rhoticised goat, or most people around me - in my immediate family or community - but got a sense of it in some voices of people from other parts of Australia including extended family that live in another state, leading me to believe it's probably regional. In listening a little more to my own voice now though, I think I do approach it more than I expected, but not to the same degree as most examples in the video.

[nataliecarrington]

This is really fascinating to me as an Aussie teacher of English as an additional language, trying to explain why some of our vowels are different to the kinds of vowels my students have heard in American English (which is the kind of English they've mostly been exposed to).

Also, "rhoticised goat" really appeals to my love of assonance haha

[HoorayKierkegaard]

Dr Geoff, as an Aussie who's curious about linguistics, I can't thank you enough!

I've been wondering about all this ever since those H20 clips went viral. Thank you so so much for this proper in-depth linguistic analysis - finally my itch is scratched.

One particularly interesting part not discussed in your video is how many Aussies - myself included - couldn't hear the rhotic r sound in our "oh no" sounds at all!

It wasn't until I spent an hour trying to make the rhotic r myself, and repeating "no" to myself dozens of times, that I could start to understand.

You see, because most Aussies under emphasise our usual (non-rhotic) r sound, and because we don't normally use rhotic r, we don't interpret the rhotic r as an r. And often, if r is after a vowel, we barely say it (like in the name Carl - we say CAHL). So it's common to find aussies online protesting that we don't say NAUR because there's no R at the end! How deaf we are to our own rhoticity! 😂

A clincher, though: the clip of Mia Goth screaming "I'm a star!" in the film Pearl sounds immensely similar to an Australian accent yelling "Emma Stone!" This is a reverse example to the ones you've provided here of an Aussie O sounding like an American r.

Thanks again!

[Sourcoolness]

The interesting thing is that this sound has actually existed in eastern Australian accents for a long time, it was just much more subtle, which is why Pru and Trude have been speaking that way since the mid nineties - they're an exaggeration of a real accent that existed at the time. Now, that version of the accent is much more posh, but the goat vowel is there.

[carlab]

As an Australian, this was absolutely fascinating! I'm also astounded by your ability to switch between accents and capture their subtleties so well – clear evidence of skill and knowledge. Thank you heaps for this video!

[biosparkles]

I'm Australian and I didn't really understand the naur meme until this video. Until you broke it down I really couldn't hear the r sound slipping in at the end of our goat vowels, but you made it so clear

[adsim]

As an Australian, I find this incredibly interesting. I'm obviously aware that accents exist, but having a well-communicated academic breakdown about how mine/Australian's accents work is truly fascinating. I've been saying words out loud with the video and catching myself thinking "oh shit, we do say it like that."

[Zelmel]

It's amazing how much context can inform everything in speech.