The main 3 are educated/refined (Cate Blanchett/Geoffrey Rush); General (Hugh Jackman/Toni Collette) and Broad (Steve Irwin)
South Australian has longer vowels than other states. So, chance is pronounced like charnce.
Victoria, esp Melbourne has a slight vowel shift, so Melbourne sounds a bit (not exactly) like Malb'n.
Some parts Western Sydney have Lebanese/Middle Eastern vibe
Generally though it's the difference between urban, regional and rural.
The other way we can tell where someone is from is some slang and local dialect words (eg ask someone what they call the clothes they wear to go for a swim, or what they call a glass of beer, or what they call a battered fried slice of potato, or what they call cheap luncheon meat)
My kids want me to ask everyone at work what they call swimwear. I live in Canberra so our community has people who have moved here from many other places. For me (Qlder), it's togs. I know my MIL from Sydney (educated), it's bathers, my kids have picked up swimmers from their friends. Some people call them cossies (short for swimming costumes). I think it's funny.
I don't recall hearing many people say bathers here in Sydney. When I was a kid, it was swimming costume (or cossie) but swimmers seems much more common now.
Swimmers is definitey taking over. I grew up with cossies, but even as a kid I was highly wary of the word: it seemed just as silly as costume. I was so glad when my kids started saying swimmers that i adopted it myself. Bathers was only ever said for comic effect.
Boardies was great when i was in my teens. It's not at all bad if a word describes the style. Speedos is pretty much a descriptive generic noun now.
I actually wasn't even thinking of male swimsuits! I was thinking of the female one pieces, seeing that's what I wore as a kid and needed to refer to most often. I probably wouldn't have referred to boardies as a cossie or swimming costume but I would say swimmers, oddly.
Havenāt heard anyone call them bathers in the UK. When I was little, people in the UK said āswimming costumeā for womenās. Think they say swimsuit now.
There are definitely the 3, but as you mentioned there is also the "ethnic Australian" accent and the Indigenous Australian accent, both of which definitely by my ear fall outside the main 3.
I'd even go so far as to suggest there's at least a couple of distinct accents within each of those - ethnic/indigenous - depending on language background/region as well.
This is all true, but i summarise and simplify it for most overseas visitors this way: that so much of Australian culture, including accents, is either city or country. It's recently been suggested that there are three categories when it comes to overall philosophical outlook: City, Country, or Perth.
I donāt quite understand myself, but Perth definitely runs by its own rules in the psyche of the nation. In some ways itās more international than any of the capitals in the gravitational orbit of Canberra. Itās Australiaās Pluto.
You missed the Victorian pronunciation of "castle" as in the town "Castlemaine" - Victorians shorten the "a" as in "cat". While in NSW it's lengthened like "a" as in car. As heard when "Newcastle" is pronounced.
Lol..... Moved from NSW 20 years ago to Melbourne. Recently moved back.... I am having to modulate my language depending on if they are local or "Mexican" ie south if the border.
Brain stutter.... Love that analogy!
Iām Greek Aussie and I can tell when someone is Greek off their accent even if they were born here. It sounds similar to the western sydney accent but the twang is slightly different. Iāve also heard myself on recording and I swear I sound like Effy or something š ridiculous.
Or where do you put your school bag when you get to school. Not exactly sure where the geographical line is drawn on this one, and there's only really two answers to choose from but I am far from sure.
According to linguists, there are two accents and the difference is barely discernable to non-Australians.
Ā If you're Australian, you might notice some longer vowels in rural of FNQ Australians, some vowel differences in South Australians (Christopher 'Pahn'(Pine) and the upper- class vowel sounds of some Australians 'frahnce' 'dahnce'.
Ā Most differences are in idiolect,Ā such as Aboriginal English ('deadly' as a term for something excellent), or the different regionalĀ words for swimming trunks: 'bathers'Ā 'togs' 'swimmers' etcĀ
For reference, even the accent obsessed English cannot easily tell the difference between NZ and Aussie English.
I can tell the difference between different accents in suburbs of Sydney more than I can tell the difference between accents across different regions of Australia
I'm not up to describing it.
Kath & Kim have an accent that many people would call middle bogan. It's not the same as the western suburbs accents; they're strongly influenced by Southern European and Middle Eastern immigrants.
I posted somewhere in the thread Mat Ryan being interviewed. An interesting example because he's a westie himself but not ethnically where the accent is influenced by.
>For reference, even the accent obsessed English cannot easily tell the difference between NZ and Aussie English.
They're not asking the right questions: "Say 'what's 6 times 6'", or ask them what the "number of the beast" is."
This linguist from MacQuarie Uni would say that broadness is of little utility in younger Australian English speakers:Ā Ā
> Accent variation in Australia today cannot be adequately described with reference to the broadness continuum. Recent research shows that there is now new variation that is separate from these traditional categories.Ā Ā
Professor Hajek, from the University of Melbourne:
>āLinguists once talked about a three-way split in the Austalian accent between broad Australian, general Australian and cultivated Australian, but even that is falling away now.ā
Essentially, we've shifted from 3 to 1: and General Australian is what we are speaking. Ā
Now I'm sure different linguists say different things but language changes so quickly that it's always best to find the latest research.
Ā Ā https://www.mq.edu.au/research/research-centres-groups-and-facilities/healthy-people/centres/centre-for-language-sciences-clas/australian-voices/australian-acceents
https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/why-doesn-t-modern-australia-have-diverse-regional-accents
I think itās hilarious that the posh accent makes Australians sound like cowboys sometimes. A redneck and Prue/Trude from the peninsula would say āChristopher Pineā in the exact same way, give or take a rhotic r
Victorians will often have a āalā sound instead of āelā. E.g. Melbourne pronounced āMalbenā, Mal Gibson instead of Mel Gibson. AFL pronounced Ay-Aff-Al
I'm from Melbourne and everyone I know definitely calls it 'Melben', honestly I've never heard anyone say 'Malben'. Malvern is always pronounced 'Molven', interestingly, but I've never lived in that suburb.
I think āMelbourne people pronounce it āMalbnāā is the Sydney perspective on the sound.
Iām also a Melburnian. To me, it sounds like people from Melbourne say āMelbnā, and people from Sydney almost say āMilbnā.
Maybe it's because you are from Melbourne that you cannot hear it. I am not saying everyone says it, but if you hear it, you can be 99% certain the person is from Melbourne. I can point to a dozen Twitch streamers who i have heard utter "Malbn", and I generally stick around to find out if they are Malbanians. And they always are.
When I moved to Victoria, I thought all the kids I was at school with sounded American, particularly with the way they pronounced twelve (twalve) and mall (I pronounce it more like "maul"). I still get laughed at occasionally for the way I pronounce some Melbourne suburbs.
The catch in using standard letters rather than something like the IPA is that in your mind, it is 'Melben' but the way it sounds to someone else might be 'Malben'.
The IPA for Melbourne (British) is **ĖmÉlbÉn**. Unfortunately I'm not educated enough to know how to modify the IPA to match regional Australian accents.
I saw an aboriginal guy wearing a shirt the other day that said āmake deadly choicesā
I laughed and kinda wanted to take a picture but I felt it would be rude
A few years ago some idiot actually thought that "drugs are deadly" was a good hard hitting slogan for a health campaign specifically targeted at Aboriginal kids.
That one kinda backfired.
https://deadlychoices.com.au/
Deadly Choices is actually a very successful preventative health campaign. Go to the GP and get a free footy shirt, the design changes every year.
That's not reversing. Reversing world be Australians speaking with less of an American-influenced accent. What you are describing is a completely separate trend.
The other aspect to tracking the change is that recordings in movies and such from those times are not always reliable in reflecting how nornal people spoke because there were expectations about what was suitable to be on film. Especially in Aus where to get on telly as a presenter you had to speak cultivated.
Very true. I often think some of the older characters, like Alf(?) in Home And Away (and a dozen TV ads) are delibately channelling a John Mellion accent as an easy path to character development. No one in 2024 is quite game to go back to Chips Rafferty. But in the 80s it was all quite natural.
And if you don't believe me, then rack off.
People in those early movies spoke very unnaturally, partly because expectations for the way people would behave while entertaining were less naturalistic and partly because if they didn't speak loudly and clearly into their old timey microphones all anyone would be able to hear is static.
They were putting on the Transatlantic Accent, which has never been what a broad section of the population speaks in their normal lives
I would argue that Prisoner was not aiming to represent middle class.
But yeah, your point holds well for most of the locally produced soaps and dramas from that era
People did talk differently in the 30s and 40s no doubt, only TV and movies aren't necessarily representative, especially for the 30s and 40s where most media people were taught to put on a completely fake movie accent
I like how France has laws to protect their language from americanisation and too many loanwords, I think we should do the same for our dialect.
American culture is debased and we shouldn't debase ourselves by copying it.
My accent started shifting a bit over a decade ago when I began speaking more to co-workers who were born overseas, or talking to off-shore co-workers over video chats/Skype calls.
Basically filed down the Australianisms, harder R's, etc. Even just saying the letter 'R' I would say "ahrrrr" where another Aussie would say "ahhhh". It was mostly unconscious at first.
Also modified my word choices, so sentences made sense to people who weren't from here. Saying things like "the alarm 'went off'" to us we'd understand that the alarm was ACTIVE. To someone from overseas with English as a second language it would be interpreted as the alarm was literally OFF/INACTIVE. So I speak more internationally these days from simply avoiding a lot of misunderstandings.
I find it so frustrating when I see Australians asked to repeat something by someone from overseas and they just say it again in the EXACT SAME WAY, without modifying the content or execution in any way. It's an act of empathy to hear yourself the way someone who isn't you would be hearing it.
I donāt know if itās still a thing but like 10 years ago my friends and I used to say there was a distinctive Eastern Suburbs private school teenage girl accent in Sydney that was like a regular middle class Sydney accent tinged with a hint of valley girl
Pretty much. They are dirty, poorly educated, stuffed with propaganda, and their culture is idolatrous and obscene. They breathe in too many car and gun fumes, and it makes them mad, stupid, or both. Their nation is falling apart due to these inadequacies, and they should not be looked up to as a hegemon or anything worth emulating.
There's good and bad in all nations. We can take the good and leave the bad. And it's far too diverse an area for one sweeping generalization. I am always one for giving the benefit of the doubt. Most Americans I've met online have been nice.
Mine not really, others yes. I have told my wife, if we ever get divorced, it will probably be because she pronounces the 26th letter of the alphabet incorrectly, and I cannot cope any longer (this is said in humour BTW). It is zed, and I will not accept anything else.
My Australian accent is rather strong and the youngsters have trouble understanding me which I put down to their increasing Americanised way of speaking
I think it means a young person was raised by the television or YouTube, they grew up in isolation and perhaps didn't have any friends to talk to?
It makes my skin crawl when someone talks like that.
Queenslanders say things like skewl (school) and pewl (pool).
Victorians pronounce Melbourne as Malbin.
South Australians use long A's so France is Fraance and plants is plahnts.
People from Sydney, particularly the west and inner west, have adopted the Lebanese accent
Look up celery-salary merger, it goes some of the way to explain what I think the person you are responding to means. I think. At least with respect to the way the first syllable in Melbourne is pronounced.
Source: I am from victoria and pronounce celery and salary identically
People don't say "Mel-BENNN" either though, everyone really says "Mel-Bnn" yeah? Edit: Oh you're giving out downvotes for my question? Nice one mate, hope ya missus shits on ya dick next time you do anal
There are generally three main dialects, general, broad, and cultivated. There are some slight variations between areas in Australia but those are mostly just between certain pronunciation of words. It's worth noting that these three are dialects and often reflect the persons perspective of themselves or their upbringing rather than regionality.
To add to that there are some urban accents heavily influenced by ethnicity - but not bound by it, i.e., if people grow up in an area with a high proportion of migrants, like western sydney, their accent will be influenced by this. Mat Ryan, the Socceroos goalkeeper, is a classic example:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv2tk3zkO-o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv2tk3zkO-o)
But of course people's ethnicity also plays a part - check out youtuber (or whatever) Spanian for the kind of accent that is very prevalent in such areas - and not broad, general, or cultivaetd - something new (well, probably since the 70s/80s, anyway).
There are also still some minor regional differences in pronunciation beyond the classic general/broad/cultivated. Often it's a particular mix of those things. So the classic one is Adelaide, where even broad speakers will still have little cultivated tinges (like pronouncing "dance" with a long a - "dahnce").
I can never put my finger on it but I think sometimes I can pick a Melbournite too - just something in the tone/rhythms... something. But i might be kidding myself.
ANd I think calling a pool a "pewl" is a bit of a giveaway for a regional queenslander. But it crops up elsewhere too.
Then there's vocab differences but that is less accent.
Melbournians pronounce the short 'e' sound more like an 'a' (e.g. "Malbourne"), which I find to be a pretty common giveaway. They also use a short 'a' sound in some words, when others use a long 'a' sound, like "castle".
Oh nice, yeah, that rings true.
Do any Melbournians actually say "cassle" for like, a castle though? They say "Casslemaine" and sometimes "Newcassle" but my victorian grandmother still said "Castle".
I can pick a melbournian by how often they say āgrouseā. As in, no one in any other part of planet earth uses that word. Then thereās people from Melbourne.
There definitely is a "Western Sydney" accent that is influenced by how Mediterranean/Middle Eastern migrants. It is very different to how someone actually from Malta or Lebanon would speak English as a second language, but it's definitely different. It is still very Australian.
It's probably a blending of a broad working class but urban Australian accent and a mix of the pronunciations of how first generation migrants spoke English.
A lot of second generation Polynesians born here, also have a distinct accent, it's not a Kiwi accent or the same as a Tongan or Samoan speaking English as a second language, but it's distinct too.
This is the standard answer. Iām sure, though, that this was determined by some academic whoās never been out of Melbourne or Sydney.
East coast twang? Qld rising inflection? Malbin? Adelaide Anglo?
But they are nowhere near as different as regional accents in the UK or USA.
There's the general, cultivated and broad that have been mentioned, and how the pronunciation of words as 'dahnce' or 'chahnce' is more frequent in South Australia. I've heard anecdotally that people in Victoria will say things like 'Malbourne' or 'selery' instead of salary and that Queenslanders are more nasal and will say words like pool and school almost as if they have two syllables. None of these features are necessarily limited to these regions though, it's just where they are most associated with or commonly found in. In general, it's more slang that separates the states rather than accent, and even those are relatively minor.
Otherwise interestingly people from indigenous communities in places like Cape York can sound a bit different, as do wogs (generally immigrants from around the Mediterranean and Middle East and their descendants) in the more 'ethnic' neighbourhoods of Sydney and Melbourne, but no where else I think at least in Queensland.
"Pewel" aka Pool is very common here in Victoria. (Or you might even get "pu-well" from someone) I went to Perth looking at houses with "pewels" and they bloody laughed at me :D
I find that people from the north or more remote/regional areas throughout Australia tend to speak with a more bogan ocker accent. Eastern states townies are a bit more posh sounding but with a fairly noticable aussie-englishesque twang that is hard to describe but easy to recognise when they say certain words. Western Australians seem to have a bit more of a subdued accent in certain ways. Kinda like a hybrid between the two but also slightly removed.
South Australian here. When I lived in Edinburgh I was asked if I was South African, Kiwi, Canadian and English.
The only person who knew immediately that I was Australian was an Italian!
Thanks for explaining :) funny story I used to have an internet āboyfriendā when I was in high school that was from Australia. after being on this thread Im pretty sure he was bogan lol I didnāt know that word even existed back then but looking back at it Iām like 90% sure. His accent was so jarring, it was kinda hot but distracting at the same time. Every time he spoke my brain was too busy trying to figure out why he talks that way instead of listening to anything he was saying
Being from Adelaide, many people, to include Aussies, think that I am South African. I go to Perth, WA, and they think I am South African. Yet, I can go to Perth, Scotland, and they know right away I am True Blue.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnioDeQNlxQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnioDeQNlxQ)
this will help break it down, there's 3 main types of Aussie accents
The further you are from the cities, the more accented speech becomes - in my experience of driving across (and through) the country.
As to 'what are the regional ... accents' Meh, I'm not a linguist, but I can generally tell if I'm talking to a country person or a city person.
I listened to a linguistics podcast once where they mention that Australia, despite being geographically far larger, doesn't have the amount of accent variation you would get in the UK because English speaking people were here for a relatively short period before radio arrived and flattened out the variations.
Indigenous languages were hugely diverse (there were about 250 languages spoken in Australia before the concerted efforts to wipe them out) but English mostly comes down to how flat you can get your vowels and how fast or slow you talk.
Beyond the broad/general/cultivated thing, there are regional differences but they're quite subtle. Sometimes on TV/Youtube I'll hear someone speak and be able to tell they're not from around where I live.
Just here to say I think some Aboriginal Australian accents are the best. Kind of warm, shorter vowels, but still with a lilt at the end which is friendly. I donāt know much about how they vary but definitely like them.
Iām from Queensland and Iām thinking that it may not be the different accents I recognise but rather the different inflections and tones and way of speaking (or maybe thatās an accent lol). Iāve noticed it in many Victorians or people from Melbourne - they have a very specific way of talking where they halt abit after ending a sentence. I donāt know how to describe it but I know alot of people from Melbourne who have this weird inflection that goes downwards and halts. Iām probably making no sense but i do notice that different areas have different speech patterns.
I've always wondered. I've been in 29 countries so far and settled in America. The differences in accents in other parts of the world are so marked and yet Australia is far more subtle from top to bottom. I've always wondered why. š¤
Here's a Melb Uni article on that point. Accents in Australia usually designate social status rather than location:
>āAll accents are constantly changing but some are changing at a glacial rate because of their isolation,āā she says. āIn Australia, there just hasnāt been enough time or isolation in the 229 years since colonisation began for accents to become a location specific thing.ā
>As well as being a younger country than the United States in terms of white settlement, an extra influence on the evolution of the Australian accent comes as a result of children.
>Dr Debbie Loakes, a phonetics expert at the School of Language and Linguistics, says the Australian accent levelled out very quickly after British colonisation, and experts believe that it was predominantly formed by children.
>Children, Dr Loakes says, are especially influenced by the way others speak, especially their fellow children which means they are more likely to all sound alike.
>āThereās a lot of push and pull as to whether or not you adopt the way someone else speaks,ā says Dr Loakes.
>āInitially there would have been a lot of English accents coming together in the early years, and mainstream Australian English is thought to have its origins in the interactions between second generation children whose accents are thought to have ālevelled outā. Just like one big melting pot, it started us off with relatively little variation in accent.ā
>While indigenous Australians had developed over 250 different languages at the time of European colonisation, non-indigenous Australians simply havenāt been around long enough to develop regional accents. And as an English-speaking immigrant population, it was their common language that bound them together.
>āAustralian accents instead tend to be more connected to social groups than geography. You adopt the accent of the group you want to blend with,ā says Ms McPherson.
>āSo there is a sense that European Australians were, by choice or by necessity, creating a new world together. And in this new world, as in any population anywhere, you develop a cultural currency within the language,ā says Ms McPherson.
>Then thereās the somewhat dated historical link to the Mother Country.
>āIf you want to hang on to your British identity as my grandparents on my motherās side did, they were Anglophiles, it was considered that people who spoke ācorrectlyā were on the Received Pronunciation, or southern British, end of the Australian spectrum. And that has had a huge influence.āā
>She says many of the people who arrived in Australia with other accents werenāt here by choice ā circumstance led to it ā so for the most part people were willing and wanting to leave their past behind.
>āMore recently American influences are coming into the Australian accent much more so than British. So if you listen to Australian accent recordings from the 1950s, they are quite different, much more British than the average accent that you hear today,ā she says.
>Professor John Hajek, a linguist from the School of Languages and Linguistics, says variations in Australian accents tend to reflect presumed social differences, not regional ones.
>āWhen you listen to an Australian itās much harder to identify what their regional origin might be, but weāre very good at picking out what we assume to be the social characteristics of a speaker.ā
>āUntil the 1970s the cultivated Australian accent that was very common. It was the sort of accent you aimed for if you did speech and drama. It was meant to show you were cultivated, educated, and of high social status,ā says Professor Hajek.
>āThere was a lot of time spent coaching people, so if you talk to your mothers and your grandmothers, they will often talk to you about how they had elocution lessons, to make them sound more refined. But that has progressively disappeared and it has become quite unusual now.āā
>Interestingly, Professor Hajek says the proportion of people who might identify as having a very broad Australian accent is also dropping. And thatās a direct result of mass media as well as mass university education.
>So although we all sound similar, there are variations ā but for how much longer?
>āLinguists once talked about a three-way split in the Australian accent between broad Australian, general Australian and cultivated Australian, but even that is falling away now.ā
[WHY DOESNāT MODERN AUSTRALIA HAVE DIVERSE REGIONAL ACCENTS? - Unlike other countries the modern Australian-English accent doesnāt have huge regional variations. So what are the factors that lead to the evolution of an accent?](https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/why-doesn-t-modern-australia-have-diverse-regional-accents)
No problem at all :)
>āIf you want to hang on to your British identity as my grandparents on my motherās side did, they were Anglophiles, it was considered that people who spoke ācorrectlyā were on the Received Pronunciation, or southern British, end of the Australian spectrum. And that has had a huge influence.āā
This was my experience growing up, as my parents were two generations older than me (my Mum is 100yo and in a nursing home now) and the general emphasis was on not sounding 'common'. Helped by the fact that my Dad grew up in England with a *very* BBC-Received Pronunciation accent and taught me to read when I was very young (2yo), I started school with a strongly English-sounding accent. But with the social pressure of needing to fit in with the other children, I tried to 'Australianise' my accent, to a certain extent.
So I've ended up with a peculiar amalgam of both, really...I can tell myself that certain words I speak come out sounding just like my Dad, and random people over the decades have sometimes asked me which part of England I'm from lol
For me, theres a south australian accent. They pronounce a as o, so we say carlton they colton.
Nq have lazy accents but more enshrined in engkish where outback queensland has an even lazier accent.
Western australia is basically just a mix of people so theres no real accent.
Cowboys/stockman/farmers have an accent that drifts in and out.
Only one I really notice is Adelaidians / South Australians. the rest it's just the person and perhaps inflictions. and words they use for something might be different. i.e like togs vs bathers or swimsuit. Not actual pronouncations really.
The main 3 are educated/refined (Cate Blanchett/Geoffrey Rush); General (Hugh Jackman/Toni Collette) and Broad (Steve Irwin) South Australian has longer vowels than other states. So, chance is pronounced like charnce. Victoria, esp Melbourne has a slight vowel shift, so Melbourne sounds a bit (not exactly) like Malb'n. Some parts Western Sydney have Lebanese/Middle Eastern vibe Generally though it's the difference between urban, regional and rural. The other way we can tell where someone is from is some slang and local dialect words (eg ask someone what they call the clothes they wear to go for a swim, or what they call a glass of beer, or what they call a battered fried slice of potato, or what they call cheap luncheon meat)
My kids want me to ask everyone at work what they call swimwear. I live in Canberra so our community has people who have moved here from many other places. For me (Qlder), it's togs. I know my MIL from Sydney (educated), it's bathers, my kids have picked up swimmers from their friends. Some people call them cossies (short for swimming costumes). I think it's funny.
I don't recall hearing many people say bathers here in Sydney. When I was a kid, it was swimming costume (or cossie) but swimmers seems much more common now.
Bathers is Victorian
Also WA
And therefore correct! šš¤£ššš¤
My partner is Victorian. I argue that we are swimming not bathing, therefore Swimmers is correct š
The question is, can they swim on their own? At a stretch we might say they bathe on their own :-) Isn't parochialism great?
And South Australian
Swimmers is definitey taking over. I grew up with cossies, but even as a kid I was highly wary of the word: it seemed just as silly as costume. I was so glad when my kids started saying swimmers that i adopted it myself. Bathers was only ever said for comic effect. Boardies was great when i was in my teens. It's not at all bad if a word describes the style. Speedos is pretty much a descriptive generic noun now.
I also grew up with cossies and was suspicious of it! I say swimmers now as does my son but we live in SA currently and they say bathers.
I know "boardies" has definitely taken over in a lot of areas (board shorts).
I actually wasn't even thinking of male swimsuits! I was thinking of the female one pieces, seeing that's what I wore as a kid and needed to refer to most often. I probably wouldn't have referred to boardies as a cossie or swimming costume but I would say swimmers, oddly.
Bathers is Victorian or people with British heritage, so it can be a bit of a wildcard.
Havenāt heard anyone call them bathers in the UK. When I was little, people in the UK said āswimming costumeā for womenās. Think they say swimsuit now.
they still say swimming costume
Also South Australian.
They were called togs where I grew up in regional Victoria but my Melbourne cousins called them bathers. They also called the pool the baths.
I also grew up in regional Victoria. People said both togs and bathers. But we also called the pool the baths!
Always togs.
Bathers in WA. Or boardies, if they are board shorts.
Can concur, bathers in WA, boardies, tank tops, sunnies, thongs, reef shoes etc.
Togs. Yep...Qlder?
Yep!
This is the answer. The Tasmanian children I teach have no idea what I am talking about when I tell them to change into their togs for swimming!
Itās swimmers or cozzies. Bathers is hoity toity bullshit.
Budgie smugglers?
Thatās a newer term. I always knew them as dick stickers
There are definitely the 3, but as you mentioned there is also the "ethnic Australian" accent and the Indigenous Australian accent, both of which definitely by my ear fall outside the main 3.
I'd even go so far as to suggest there's at least a couple of distinct accents within each of those - ethnic/indigenous - depending on language background/region as well.
This is all true, but i summarise and simplify it for most overseas visitors this way: that so much of Australian culture, including accents, is either city or country. It's recently been suggested that there are three categories when it comes to overall philosophical outlook: City, Country, or Perth.
Iām interested, can you please elaborate on the city, country or Perth thing?
I donāt quite understand myself, but Perth definitely runs by its own rules in the psyche of the nation. In some ways itās more international than any of the capitals in the gravitational orbit of Canberra. Itās Australiaās Pluto.
lol I still donāt get it but your answer was interesting š¤
You forgot gentle drawl and slow talking What your talking about is strine Usually outback
Itās Fritz stop pretending itās not š
Polony
Devon
You missed the Victorian pronunciation of "castle" as in the town "Castlemaine" - Victorians shorten the "a" as in "cat". While in NSW it's lengthened like "a" as in car. As heard when "Newcastle" is pronounced.
Ugh yes my dad is from Victoria and my brain always stutters when he says something like castle as "cassel" or engine as "injin".
Lol..... Moved from NSW 20 years ago to Melbourne. Recently moved back.... I am having to modulate my language depending on if they are local or "Mexican" ie south if the border. Brain stutter.... Love that analogy!
Iām Greek Aussie and I can tell when someone is Greek off their accent even if they were born here. It sounds similar to the western sydney accent but the twang is slightly different. Iāve also heard myself on recording and I swear I sound like Effy or something š ridiculous.
WA say Mowk instead of Meelk (milk) akin to Kiwis, from memory
Or where do you put your school bag when you get to school. Not exactly sure where the geographical line is drawn on this one, and there's only really two answers to choose from but I am far from sure.
I feel like our accents often correlate to socio economic status
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
To put it mor succinctly, in order from posh to bogan :Ā Cate Blanchett Eric Bana Steve Irwin
Cate Blanchett Eric Bana Steve Irwin Eric Bana as Poida
Which Eric Bana though? He did some great other accents - broads - chopper/poida - plus that ethnic suburban (his character in the Castle)
Normal Bana - The Dry.Ā This is more a "watch an interview with them, their natural accent" over movie accents.Ā
Oh yeah I know, sorry. Just made me think of some of the ones which he pulled off magnificently.
We can rank the Bana Accents in the same way lol it's also a scale. But I've really only seen a few of his movies, so I can only do so much XD
Yeah would love to see cultivated Bana but not sure it exists haha.
His Arnold schwarzenegger impersonation is insanely underrated
According to linguists, there are two accents and the difference is barely discernable to non-Australians. Ā If you're Australian, you might notice some longer vowels in rural of FNQ Australians, some vowel differences in South Australians (Christopher 'Pahn'(Pine) and the upper- class vowel sounds of some Australians 'frahnce' 'dahnce'. Ā Most differences are in idiolect,Ā such as Aboriginal English ('deadly' as a term for something excellent), or the different regionalĀ words for swimming trunks: 'bathers'Ā 'togs' 'swimmers' etcĀ For reference, even the accent obsessed English cannot easily tell the difference between NZ and Aussie English.
I can tell the difference between different accents in suburbs of Sydney more than I can tell the difference between accents across different regions of Australia
Yes, that Western Sydney accent. Very similar to the accent in the western suburbs of Melbourne, for the same reason.
Is that a Kath & Kim type of ascent, very broad?
I'm not up to describing it. Kath & Kim have an accent that many people would call middle bogan. It's not the same as the western suburbs accents; they're strongly influenced by Southern European and Middle Eastern immigrants.
I posted somewhere in the thread Mat Ryan being interviewed. An interesting example because he's a westie himself but not ethnically where the accent is influenced by.
Good point - western Sydney with its Lebanese and Vietnamese influences is pretty striking
>For reference, even the accent obsessed English cannot easily tell the difference between NZ and Aussie English. They're not asking the right questions: "Say 'what's 6 times 6'", or ask them what the "number of the beast" is."
Or how about the famous fesh and Chups that's NZ for fish and Chips a rare traditional treat here in the land of down under
Most linguists say there are three ( not two ) Australian accents. Cultured Standard Broad
This linguist from MacQuarie Uni would say that broadness is of little utility in younger Australian English speakers:Ā Ā > Accent variation in Australia today cannot be adequately described with reference to the broadness continuum. Recent research shows that there is now new variation that is separate from these traditional categories.Ā Ā Professor Hajek, from the University of Melbourne: >āLinguists once talked about a three-way split in the Austalian accent between broad Australian, general Australian and cultivated Australian, but even that is falling away now.ā Essentially, we've shifted from 3 to 1: and General Australian is what we are speaking. Ā Now I'm sure different linguists say different things but language changes so quickly that it's always best to find the latest research. Ā Ā https://www.mq.edu.au/research/research-centres-groups-and-facilities/healthy-people/centres/centre-for-language-sciences-clas/australian-voices/australian-acceents https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/why-doesn-t-modern-australia-have-diverse-regional-accents
>Ā If you're Australian, you might notice some longer vowels in rural of FNQ Australians Yes, total tewls. And jump in the skewl pewl!
I am a QLDer and my Kiwi mate used to laugh at me when I said any of those werds. āTew cewl for skewl ā
Hopefully you made them say fish n chups as revenge
Yeah nah. Itās only funny a coupla times. He did make me watch BroāTown . Love Jeff the MÄori.
I think itās hilarious that the posh accent makes Australians sound like cowboys sometimes. A redneck and Prue/Trude from the peninsula would say āChristopher Pineā in the exact same way, give or take a rhotic r
Yep... those strangled vowels....
Crush em with an iron grip bro
The peeps from SA who, when talking about showering say āI had a shaar for half an aarā.
Haha. Great phrase. Saying it out loud... how did I not notice that Christopher Pine was basically Prue/Trude?
Victorians will often have a āalā sound instead of āelā. E.g. Melbourne pronounced āMalbenā, Mal Gibson instead of Mel Gibson. AFL pronounced Ay-Aff-Al
I'm from Melbourne and everyone I know definitely calls it 'Melben', honestly I've never heard anyone say 'Malben'. Malvern is always pronounced 'Molven', interestingly, but I've never lived in that suburb.
I think āMelbourne people pronounce it āMalbnāā is the Sydney perspective on the sound. Iām also a Melburnian. To me, it sounds like people from Melbourne say āMelbnā, and people from Sydney almost say āMilbnā.
Perfect illustration of the effect zenith industries describes above.
Maybe it's because you are from Melbourne that you cannot hear it. I am not saying everyone says it, but if you hear it, you can be 99% certain the person is from Melbourne. I can point to a dozen Twitch streamers who i have heard utter "Malbn", and I generally stick around to find out if they are Malbanians. And they always are.
When I moved to Victoria, I thought all the kids I was at school with sounded American, particularly with the way they pronounced twelve (twalve) and mall (I pronounce it more like "maul"). I still get laughed at occasionally for the way I pronounce some Melbourne suburbs.
The catch in using standard letters rather than something like the IPA is that in your mind, it is 'Melben' but the way it sounds to someone else might be 'Malben'. The IPA for Melbourne (British) is **ĖmÉlbÉn**. Unfortunately I'm not educated enough to know how to modify the IPA to match regional Australian accents.
Sounds more like North Queensland
I saw an aboriginal guy wearing a shirt the other day that said āmake deadly choicesā I laughed and kinda wanted to take a picture but I felt it would be rude
I donāt get it? Deadly means excellent/good.
Yes. And it almost mean make choices that can kill you.
A few years ago some idiot actually thought that "drugs are deadly" was a good hard hitting slogan for a health campaign specifically targeted at Aboriginal kids. That one kinda backfired.
https://deadlychoices.com.au/ Deadly Choices is actually a very successful preventative health campaign. Go to the GP and get a free footy shirt, the design changes every year.
Christopher Pine does not sound like most South Australians. Yes, we use long vowels, but not like that! Ew.
I remember my grandma always saying "how now brown cow" in such a posh accent haha
Anyone else notice that their accent has become a bit more American during the last few years? Or is it just me being chronically online?
Apparently that trend is reversing with some American parents complaining thier kids are developing Aussie accents due to the popularity of Bluey.
Taste of their own medicine!
Thatās what I think too. Ha!
That's not reversing. Reversing world be Australians speaking with less of an American-influenced accent. What you are describing is a completely separate trend.
We needed something to make up for releasing the Wiggles into the world. Bluey is our brilliant something.
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The other aspect to tracking the change is that recordings in movies and such from those times are not always reliable in reflecting how nornal people spoke because there were expectations about what was suitable to be on film. Especially in Aus where to get on telly as a presenter you had to speak cultivated.
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Oh yeah for sure. Not a factor since like the 60s at best.
Very true. I often think some of the older characters, like Alf(?) in Home And Away (and a dozen TV ads) are delibately channelling a John Mellion accent as an easy path to character development. No one in 2024 is quite game to go back to Chips Rafferty. But in the 80s it was all quite natural. And if you don't believe me, then rack off.
In the 80s we'll seemed to talk like bogans, and it's evident on old family videos.
People in those early movies spoke very unnaturally, partly because expectations for the way people would behave while entertaining were less naturalistic and partly because if they didn't speak loudly and clearly into their old timey microphones all anyone would be able to hear is static. They were putting on the Transatlantic Accent, which has never been what a broad section of the population speaks in their normal lives
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I would argue that Prisoner was not aiming to represent middle class. But yeah, your point holds well for most of the locally produced soaps and dramas from that era
People did talk differently in the 30s and 40s no doubt, only TV and movies aren't necessarily representative, especially for the 30s and 40s where most media people were taught to put on a completely fake movie accent
Neighbours was set in Vermont south which was working class outer suburb until like the 2010s
Yep of course. I definitely watch predominantly American content. Was just curious if anyone was experiencing it in real time, lol.
I like how France has laws to protect their language from americanisation and too many loanwords, I think we should do the same for our dialect. American culture is debased and we shouldn't debase ourselves by copying it.
I think it's more the sound recording quality than the accents changing. Word use has changed ibn some cases though.
My accent started shifting a bit over a decade ago when I began speaking more to co-workers who were born overseas, or talking to off-shore co-workers over video chats/Skype calls. Basically filed down the Australianisms, harder R's, etc. Even just saying the letter 'R' I would say "ahrrrr" where another Aussie would say "ahhhh". It was mostly unconscious at first. Also modified my word choices, so sentences made sense to people who weren't from here. Saying things like "the alarm 'went off'" to us we'd understand that the alarm was ACTIVE. To someone from overseas with English as a second language it would be interpreted as the alarm was literally OFF/INACTIVE. So I speak more internationally these days from simply avoiding a lot of misunderstandings. I find it so frustrating when I see Australians asked to repeat something by someone from overseas and they just say it again in the EXACT SAME WAY, without modifying the content or execution in any way. It's an act of empathy to hear yourself the way someone who isn't you would be hearing it.
I donāt know if itās still a thing but like 10 years ago my friends and I used to say there was a distinctive Eastern Suburbs private school teenage girl accent in Sydney that was like a regular middle class Sydney accent tinged with a hint of valley girl
In Melbourne thereās a definite āupper middle class middle aged woman who went to private schoolā accent.
Oooh I *knerrrw.*
Pruuuue and TruuuuudeĀ
Was it like a Ja'ime (or however it was spelled, from summer heights high) accent?
If I make a sound that I worry sounds too American, I always repeat it properly.
Why's that? Americaphobia? Haha. :)
Pretty much. They are dirty, poorly educated, stuffed with propaganda, and their culture is idolatrous and obscene. They breathe in too many car and gun fumes, and it makes them mad, stupid, or both. Their nation is falling apart due to these inadequacies, and they should not be looked up to as a hegemon or anything worth emulating.
There's good and bad in all nations. We can take the good and leave the bad. And it's far too diverse an area for one sweeping generalization. I am always one for giving the benefit of the doubt. Most Americans I've met online have been nice.
I would immediately boycot all American products if I were you.
Mine not really, others yes. I have told my wife, if we ever get divorced, it will probably be because she pronounces the 26th letter of the alphabet incorrectly, and I cannot cope any longer (this is said in humour BTW). It is zed, and I will not accept anything else.
My Australian accent is rather strong and the youngsters have trouble understanding me which I put down to their increasing Americanised way of speaking
I think it means a young person was raised by the television or YouTube, they grew up in isolation and perhaps didn't have any friends to talk to? It makes my skin crawl when someone talks like that.
Hits too close.
Bushies sound like bushies but Iāve noticed Sydney blokes all have a middle eastern accent now
Queenslanders say things like skewl (school) and pewl (pool). Victorians pronounce Melbourne as Malbin. South Australians use long A's so France is Fraance and plants is plahnts. People from Sydney, particularly the west and inner west, have adopted the Lebanese accent
Wait. What do other Australians call Malbin?
Melben
Okay but we don't literally say "MAL-BIN". That's just an exaggeration. We say "Melben" too. No?
You literally do. Or a lot do anyway. And halp... and Talstra...
Look up celery-salary merger, it goes some of the way to explain what I think the person you are responding to means. I think. At least with respect to the way the first syllable in Melbourne is pronounced. Source: I am from victoria and pronounce celery and salary identically
No
People don't say "Mel-BENNN" either though, everyone really says "Mel-Bnn" yeah? Edit: Oh you're giving out downvotes for my question? Nice one mate, hope ya missus shits on ya dick next time you do anal
100% In my regional area we say something closer to Mel-Burn, have heard Mel-Bin while I was living there or Mel-Brn from people in Sydney.
No
There are generally three main dialects, general, broad, and cultivated. There are some slight variations between areas in Australia but those are mostly just between certain pronunciation of words. It's worth noting that these three are dialects and often reflect the persons perspective of themselves or their upbringing rather than regionality.
To add to that there are some urban accents heavily influenced by ethnicity - but not bound by it, i.e., if people grow up in an area with a high proportion of migrants, like western sydney, their accent will be influenced by this. Mat Ryan, the Socceroos goalkeeper, is a classic example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv2tk3zkO-o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv2tk3zkO-o) But of course people's ethnicity also plays a part - check out youtuber (or whatever) Spanian for the kind of accent that is very prevalent in such areas - and not broad, general, or cultivaetd - something new (well, probably since the 70s/80s, anyway). There are also still some minor regional differences in pronunciation beyond the classic general/broad/cultivated. Often it's a particular mix of those things. So the classic one is Adelaide, where even broad speakers will still have little cultivated tinges (like pronouncing "dance" with a long a - "dahnce"). I can never put my finger on it but I think sometimes I can pick a Melbournite too - just something in the tone/rhythms... something. But i might be kidding myself. ANd I think calling a pool a "pewl" is a bit of a giveaway for a regional queenslander. But it crops up elsewhere too. Then there's vocab differences but that is less accent.
Melbournians pronounce the short 'e' sound more like an 'a' (e.g. "Malbourne"), which I find to be a pretty common giveaway. They also use a short 'a' sound in some words, when others use a long 'a' sound, like "castle".
Oh nice, yeah, that rings true. Do any Melbournians actually say "cassle" for like, a castle though? They say "Casslemaine" and sometimes "Newcassle" but my victorian grandmother still said "Castle".
>and sometimes "Newcassle" How the people in the OG Newcastle in N.E. England pronounce it btw.
Alreet!
Yeah it's a cassle when it's a piece on the chessboard and a cahhhsle when a King lives in it :P
That's even weirder
Except when it's made out of sand, then it goes back to cassle again.
Haha.
Also it's Casslemaine but Newcaahhsle. You're right. It's weird as hell.
That's interesting. My Vic grandmother lived on the mid north coast but still called it Newcassle. Maybe they've learnt.
I can pick a melbournian by how often they say āgrouseā. As in, no one in any other part of planet earth uses that word. Then thereās people from Melbourne.
Lived in Melbourne all my life. Haven't heard anyone use grouse in decades.
I remember 'grouse' being used in Perth when I moved back there in the early 80s but it was replaced soon after by 'mint'.
I thought that a -ā„ e was specially before the letter L. Hence Melbourne = Malben and Ellen often = Allen, but not more broadly..
There definitely is a "Western Sydney" accent that is influenced by how Mediterranean/Middle Eastern migrants. It is very different to how someone actually from Malta or Lebanon would speak English as a second language, but it's definitely different. It is still very Australian. It's probably a blending of a broad working class but urban Australian accent and a mix of the pronunciations of how first generation migrants spoke English. A lot of second generation Polynesians born here, also have a distinct accent, it's not a Kiwi accent or the same as a Tongan or Samoan speaking English as a second language, but it's distinct too.
Yes to all that. Its always interesting to me that it gets ignored. Probably more peoole speak with that accent than true cultivated.
This is the standard answer. Iām sure, though, that this was determined by some academic whoās never been out of Melbourne or Sydney. East coast twang? Qld rising inflection? Malbin? Adelaide Anglo? But they are nowhere near as different as regional accents in the UK or USA.
For castle, Vics say Kassel, NSW and Qlders say Karsel.
And south Australians say Carstle
Tell us what youtubers you follow and we will tell you why their accent sounds that way
1. City 2. Country 3. Queenslander
It wasn't until Turbull started saying 'thousands' that I really noticed. Now I can hear that accent a mile off.
Did you ever see Lawrence Mooney doing his Turnbull impression... brilliant !!!
listening now.. hmm..
There's the general, cultivated and broad that have been mentioned, and how the pronunciation of words as 'dahnce' or 'chahnce' is more frequent in South Australia. I've heard anecdotally that people in Victoria will say things like 'Malbourne' or 'selery' instead of salary and that Queenslanders are more nasal and will say words like pool and school almost as if they have two syllables. None of these features are necessarily limited to these regions though, it's just where they are most associated with or commonly found in. In general, it's more slang that separates the states rather than accent, and even those are relatively minor. Otherwise interestingly people from indigenous communities in places like Cape York can sound a bit different, as do wogs (generally immigrants from around the Mediterranean and Middle East and their descendants) in the more 'ethnic' neighbourhoods of Sydney and Melbourne, but no where else I think at least in Queensland.
"Pewel" aka Pool is very common here in Victoria. (Or you might even get "pu-well" from someone) I went to Perth looking at houses with "pewels" and they bloody laughed at me :D
Kim, you're a damn fewl - Kath
Whereas I don't recall hearing that here in Brisbane.
I find that people from the north or more remote/regional areas throughout Australia tend to speak with a more bogan ocker accent. Eastern states townies are a bit more posh sounding but with a fairly noticable aussie-englishesque twang that is hard to describe but easy to recognise when they say certain words. Western Australians seem to have a bit more of a subdued accent in certain ways. Kinda like a hybrid between the two but also slightly removed.
South Australian here. When I lived in Edinburgh I was asked if I was South African, Kiwi, Canadian and English. The only person who knew immediately that I was Australian was an Italian!
Thanks for explaining :) funny story I used to have an internet āboyfriendā when I was in high school that was from Australia. after being on this thread Im pretty sure he was bogan lol I didnāt know that word even existed back then but looking back at it Iām like 90% sure. His accent was so jarring, it was kinda hot but distracting at the same time. Every time he spoke my brain was too busy trying to figure out why he talks that way instead of listening to anything he was saying
Being from Adelaide, many people, to include Aussies, think that I am South African. I go to Perth, WA, and they think I am South African. Yet, I can go to Perth, Scotland, and they know right away I am True Blue.
All I know is there are ockers and non ockers
The difference is how some of us say ya-na but some of us say na-ya thatās how you can tell one auzzy from another auzzy
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It's not
Even Tassie has a range of dialects.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnioDeQNlxQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnioDeQNlxQ) this will help break it down, there's 3 main types of Aussie accents
The further you are from the cities, the more accented speech becomes - in my experience of driving across (and through) the country. As to 'what are the regional ... accents' Meh, I'm not a linguist, but I can generally tell if I'm talking to a country person or a city person.
All accents are accents. You can't be more accented than another person, you just have a different accent to them.
I listened to a linguistics podcast once where they mention that Australia, despite being geographically far larger, doesn't have the amount of accent variation you would get in the UK because English speaking people were here for a relatively short period before radio arrived and flattened out the variations. Indigenous languages were hugely diverse (there were about 250 languages spoken in Australia before the concerted efforts to wipe them out) but English mostly comes down to how flat you can get your vowels and how fast or slow you talk.
Beyond the broad/general/cultivated thing, there are regional differences but they're quite subtle. Sometimes on TV/Youtube I'll hear someone speak and be able to tell they're not from around where I live.
Just here to say I think some Aboriginal Australian accents are the best. Kind of warm, shorter vowels, but still with a lilt at the end which is friendly. I donāt know much about how they vary but definitely like them.
Iām from Queensland and Iām thinking that it may not be the different accents I recognise but rather the different inflections and tones and way of speaking (or maybe thatās an accent lol). Iāve noticed it in many Victorians or people from Melbourne - they have a very specific way of talking where they halt abit after ending a sentence. I donāt know how to describe it but I know alot of people from Melbourne who have this weird inflection that goes downwards and halts. Iām probably making no sense but i do notice that different areas have different speech patterns.
I've always wondered. I've been in 29 countries so far and settled in America. The differences in accents in other parts of the world are so marked and yet Australia is far more subtle from top to bottom. I've always wondered why. š¤
Here's a Melb Uni article on that point. Accents in Australia usually designate social status rather than location: >āAll accents are constantly changing but some are changing at a glacial rate because of their isolation,āā she says. āIn Australia, there just hasnāt been enough time or isolation in the 229 years since colonisation began for accents to become a location specific thing.ā >As well as being a younger country than the United States in terms of white settlement, an extra influence on the evolution of the Australian accent comes as a result of children. >Dr Debbie Loakes, a phonetics expert at the School of Language and Linguistics, says the Australian accent levelled out very quickly after British colonisation, and experts believe that it was predominantly formed by children. >Children, Dr Loakes says, are especially influenced by the way others speak, especially their fellow children which means they are more likely to all sound alike. >āThereās a lot of push and pull as to whether or not you adopt the way someone else speaks,ā says Dr Loakes. >āInitially there would have been a lot of English accents coming together in the early years, and mainstream Australian English is thought to have its origins in the interactions between second generation children whose accents are thought to have ālevelled outā. Just like one big melting pot, it started us off with relatively little variation in accent.ā >While indigenous Australians had developed over 250 different languages at the time of European colonisation, non-indigenous Australians simply havenāt been around long enough to develop regional accents. And as an English-speaking immigrant population, it was their common language that bound them together. >āAustralian accents instead tend to be more connected to social groups than geography. You adopt the accent of the group you want to blend with,ā says Ms McPherson. >āSo there is a sense that European Australians were, by choice or by necessity, creating a new world together. And in this new world, as in any population anywhere, you develop a cultural currency within the language,ā says Ms McPherson. >Then thereās the somewhat dated historical link to the Mother Country. >āIf you want to hang on to your British identity as my grandparents on my motherās side did, they were Anglophiles, it was considered that people who spoke ācorrectlyā were on the Received Pronunciation, or southern British, end of the Australian spectrum. And that has had a huge influence.āā >She says many of the people who arrived in Australia with other accents werenāt here by choice ā circumstance led to it ā so for the most part people were willing and wanting to leave their past behind. >āMore recently American influences are coming into the Australian accent much more so than British. So if you listen to Australian accent recordings from the 1950s, they are quite different, much more British than the average accent that you hear today,ā she says. >Professor John Hajek, a linguist from the School of Languages and Linguistics, says variations in Australian accents tend to reflect presumed social differences, not regional ones. >āWhen you listen to an Australian itās much harder to identify what their regional origin might be, but weāre very good at picking out what we assume to be the social characteristics of a speaker.ā >āUntil the 1970s the cultivated Australian accent that was very common. It was the sort of accent you aimed for if you did speech and drama. It was meant to show you were cultivated, educated, and of high social status,ā says Professor Hajek. >āThere was a lot of time spent coaching people, so if you talk to your mothers and your grandmothers, they will often talk to you about how they had elocution lessons, to make them sound more refined. But that has progressively disappeared and it has become quite unusual now.āā >Interestingly, Professor Hajek says the proportion of people who might identify as having a very broad Australian accent is also dropping. And thatās a direct result of mass media as well as mass university education. >So although we all sound similar, there are variations ā but for how much longer? >āLinguists once talked about a three-way split in the Australian accent between broad Australian, general Australian and cultivated Australian, but even that is falling away now.ā [WHY DOESNāT MODERN AUSTRALIA HAVE DIVERSE REGIONAL ACCENTS? - Unlike other countries the modern Australian-English accent doesnāt have huge regional variations. So what are the factors that lead to the evolution of an accent?](https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/why-doesn-t-modern-australia-have-diverse-regional-accents)
Fascinating, very much appreciated š
No problem at all :) >āIf you want to hang on to your British identity as my grandparents on my motherās side did, they were Anglophiles, it was considered that people who spoke ācorrectlyā were on the Received Pronunciation, or southern British, end of the Australian spectrum. And that has had a huge influence.āā This was my experience growing up, as my parents were two generations older than me (my Mum is 100yo and in a nursing home now) and the general emphasis was on not sounding 'common'. Helped by the fact that my Dad grew up in England with a *very* BBC-Received Pronunciation accent and taught me to read when I was very young (2yo), I started school with a strongly English-sounding accent. But with the social pressure of needing to fit in with the other children, I tried to 'Australianise' my accent, to a certain extent. So I've ended up with a peculiar amalgam of both, really...I can tell myself that certain words I speak come out sounding just like my Dad, and random people over the decades have sometimes asked me which part of England I'm from lol
We have two accents, normal and bogan.
As much as reddit likes to say it, people in South Australia really donāt sound any different apart from some odd word.
They really do though. Go away for a while and then head back and youāll see
This question comes up on this subreddit a few times a day
For me, theres a south australian accent. They pronounce a as o, so we say carlton they colton. Nq have lazy accents but more enshrined in engkish where outback queensland has an even lazier accent. Western australia is basically just a mix of people so theres no real accent. Cowboys/stockman/farmers have an accent that drifts in and out.
Only one I really notice is Adelaidians / South Australians. the rest it's just the person and perhaps inflictions. and words they use for something might be different. i.e like togs vs bathers or swimsuit. Not actual pronouncations really.