Australian English accents 

I'm a huge fan of the old aussie accent. It has a little more dignity to it, tho maybe that's coz I always hear it in old interviews with celebs and prime ministers etc.

I remember as a young kid in the 80's hearing Aussie slang like ' Pigs Arse ' and ' Blow me down '....haven't heard those words for about 30yrs

Don't rely overly on those old recordings - accents have absolutely evolved, but some of the difference is down to biases in the technology itself, and people knowing that and deliberately trying to speak to be understood. Dunno if you're old enough to know what a "phone voice" is...? Most people's "phone voice" at least used to sound utterly plummy, 'cause we knew that was what was needed for someone else to clearly understand. Same with radio accents - whether in Australia, the UK, the US, or anywhere else, noone really spoke with those old radio presenter accents.

pigs arse ya haven’t heard someone say that since the 80s

I remember noticing when I was young that very elderly working class Australians (people who grew up in the 19th century) sometimes had surprisingly cultivated accents and not the “broad” accent you might expect. I suspect they might now be perceived as speaking “posh”.

Wow. Thank you. So glad to hear the that.

@@DaveHuxtableLanguages It was amazing! I am an English as a second language in Australia, and aside from one or 2 words, I would have guessed you were Aussie. Well done!

As a native Aussie I agree, it's a pretty consistently good one. I knew he was English so I kept listening out for slips.

Wait, he's not occa? That's actually wild af! I've never ever ever heard aussie accents getting nailed. Here the accent and tonality matches the approximate age. That's craaaazy

Holy moly. I'm Australian and didn't realise he wasn't Aussie 😂. Thought he was excellent at doing English accents though lol.

To be fair they also do that when they try to sound English

As a kiwi who’s lived here in Queensland for 7 years, I was shocked to go to his channel and find out he wasn’t actually Australian hahaha

Kate Winslet😉

Literally thought old mate was Australian until he said "fellow Americans" at the end, holy shit

The late Mark McManus of Taggart strayed out on Skippy. Someone asked him how they kept Skippy so small. Skippy sometimes falls out of a tree. But kangaroos don’t climb trees. Skippy does …

Queenslanders drag their vowels. Although with migration from the south it is already changing.

Yea. I've got that Melbourne accent. Like Ned Kally vs Ned Kelly. Allan vs Ellen.

I feel the ‘Victorian’ accent is really distinctive to my Qld ear, there is a shift from ‘e’ to ‘a’ (like someone described above, e.g. Kelly to Kally) that really stands out, often on tv and radio. There also used to be an ad for Bendigo Bank on when we were kids that we’d always imitate when it came on: instead of “so nice to have someone speak to us face to face” they’d say “…fice to fice”. Edit to add - I grew up in country Qld and very used to hearing broad Australian up here so I don’t think it is solely attributable to class distinction.

@@crimsoncobber broad Aussie definitely isn't a class thing, and relates more to rural and northern speech. It's distinct from ocker/bogan.

I’m from Malban an I love the AY UF AL (AFL)

Wow - I’m honoured.

I totally agree, I have lived in Australia for many years and I've never heard a so balanced accent like this before. You're a champ that's for sure 🎉

@@MannyRockingham Wow. Thank you.

Ikr?!

Hi Hannah

Split Enz: 6 months in a leaky boat. 🎶🎵🎶🎼

I saw that too, and thought he wa a year early; but the new accent would have started almost straight away on the ships, not waiting for landfall. Most of the sailing happened in 1787, so … he's quite correct.

@@mrewan6221No. he says “Of the 1,373 people who landed in Sydney cove in 1787 as part of the first fleet...” The First Fleet arrived in Sydney cove on 25 January 1788. That’s why Australia Day is on that date and why Australia’s bicentenary was in 1988. Guessing he had 1787 in his head from the previous slide and just misspoke. Not a huge deal. He also said that people have only been speaking English in Australia since 1787, benefit of the doubt, he may have meant explorers, shipwreck survivors or others operating near Australia then but the first permanent, English speaking settlement was founded in 1788

@@D4N1CU5 If he said "… landed in Sydney Cove in 1787 …" then yes, he got it wrong. (I'm prepared to believe what you wrote; don't wan't to have to search through.) I don't think he _was_ talking about transient Europeans. Other things to consider (and I'm doing this from memory, so could be wrong): • Didn't the First Fleet arrive in Botany Bay a little earlier? I'm thinking about 19th Jan 1788. (Still not 1787, though.) • When was Sydney Cove named that? I think it might just have been part of Port Jackson at the time …. and who named Port Jackson? Was it Cook, or later? • Wasn't Dampier long before both Cook and the First Fleet? I think that was the first English-speaking exploration. Jansz was about 1606. • Australia Day is on the 26th, and the reason for that date is quite flimsy. There was probably some sort of proclamation. Other dates have a claim just as good. (And that's keeping the matter simply about European settlement, and ignoring the elephant in the room.) I've long referred to it as New South Wales Day, and it has very little relationship to the other (now) states or the Commonwealth.

​@@D4N1CU5Australia Day is 26th Jan. But yeah, you're correct re 1788.

That would be fascinating. A topic for a research trip.

South Australia is interesting in many ways. It also had strong German migration in the 1950s, mainly dairy farmers who established Rudolf Steiner style organic farming. That's why you see towns like Hahndorf and Germantown in the cycling tour down under that's in SA. Actually this created something weird; German settlers in Barossa Valley in South Australia kept using German as it was in the 1950s and never changed. Thus you take a current German person and they meet a Barossa Valley German migrant: they barely understand each other.

That's like the German spoken in various parts of the USA like Pennsylvania and Texas. @@musicalneptunian

@@musicalneptunian do you mean the 1850s? in our german class we did an assignment on the lutherans that came out to SA in the 1840-50s. i'm sure there would have been more recent immigrants as well but the towns that you mentioned are old german lutheran towns.

Add to that the major influx of German immigrants like my own family that settled there in 1836

Thank you. I’ll have to listen out for that.

but they don't know this in Malbn, in Hobart it is obvious, think it's only in the name of the city though

@@meikala2114 What's obvious in Hobart? I come from there and i don't know what you are suggesting.

This is true. I'm from Northern Victoria and there is no difference between the first vowel sound in Alice or Ellis. The way the 'e' Melbourne is pronounced is less like an 'a' and more like a very short version of the 'ei' sound in veil. @@DaveHuxtableLanguages

Sorry, no one else in Australia pronounces Melbourne "Meel-borne" though. It's rather pretentious local thing and driven by class snobbery (certain suburbs etc) in my experience. The fact is (listen when you travel next time) in normal unaffected speech for 99.9% of Australians the word Malbourne and Melbourne are pronounced identically. Gerard Whately the sport commentator is a good example of this funny "Meelbourne" pronunciation. Of course 100% agree that for locals it is always Melbun never Melborn (American style).

I'm Victorian but lived in Adelaide when I was little, some pronunciation has stuck so people look at me funny with dance, castle etc..

@@BB-xx3dvI think The Downers have their own special upper class Adelaide accent all to themselves! 😅

So true, from a 5th gen Sth Aussie.

That’s fascinating. I think often, local people can hear subtle distinctions that others don’t notice.

Brits maintain their local accents in WA. THhey degenerate into some odd Generic expat English elsewhere,

Totally agree. I grew up in Perth and then when I moved to the eastern states (Brisbane and Sydney) got asked sometimes if I was from the UK😅

Yes, from Perth here, definitely more mild here for sure. Got mistaken for British as well!!

I'm from Adelaide. I always hated how foreigners (mainly Americans) would try to imitate the Aussie accent. I always thought, "we sound nothing like like that." Then I stayed in Sydney for some time, and those attempts at an Aussie accent made so much more sense. I also find it pretty easy to spot a Victorian, but they're the ones I've had the greatest exposure to.

Even Aboriginal English varies a lot. Koori language is different from how it's spoken up north, for example.

People almost never talk about the Sydney accent when discussing Australian accents but it's extremely apparent when you hear someone from there. Anecdotally to me it seems to come from Mediterranean accents like Italian and Greek

Agree! Western Sydney has its own accent. Mostly influenced by Arabic and Greek.

@@dbenedict3555 people confuse Western Sydney and broad Australian accents. Broad Aussie is a lot more Irish and Scots.

@@dbenedict3555and Lebo

depends on the New Zealander. i play games with some guys from New Zealand and their accent is pretty different from what you would expect from say an older generation kiwi. you can tell the difference if you listen but it doesnt jump out at me instantly like i would expect.

Alan Kohler (Alun Cola)

@@saxongreen78 Yes, that's him. I like his wit.

@@liam3104 in a weird coincidence, my name is also liam, and i also have a kiwi friend with a much different accent... they sound more english than anything, with no hints of any kiwi pronunciation

The common joke amongst Aussies is that New Zealander’s say fush and chups. Whilst this is relatively true for most JAFA’s, when i was working in the South Island, i noticed they had eliminated the vowels all together. They were pronouncing it as fsh and chps, with no discernible vowel sounds whatsoever.

Who would mistake Mick for Mike though? They are spelled differently.

Yeah it's strange that this is a blind spot for him when he's usually so accurate. I live in Brisbane and I can readily tell locals from Sydneysiders and of course you can tell which side of Sydney a person is from.

It’s ok guys he lumped all londoners as cockney too. Having lived here for 40 years there are at least 4 distinct accents in london between those who speak English as a first language. I can even tell the difference between the smaller suburban towns (at least in the west where I’m from). You guys gets to hear the subtleties on a daily basis. But to the rest of us you all sound nearly the same.

@@MrDanmjack Maybe we all sound the same because nearly all Australians on TV or in movies are from Sydney 🙂

​@@normandiebryant6989more like all the most successful went to NIDA .... in Sydney.

eeeeeh He does say it's *more* homogenous, but he also points out regional differences in Aussie English, for example the trap/bath split. Not sure he attempts to convince anyone that the entire country has exactly one accent

My pleasure. So glad you enjoyed it.

Me too! It took me even longer before I started doubting myself weather he was Aussie or not…😮

Yep! I thiiink the only slip was Rough·edges was spoken as rough·ed·ges? Maybe?

Yeah I thought it was brave of an Aussie to attempt a Brummy accent!

It’s really very good, but ‘edg-is’ was a subtle giveaway. There were a few other places where I felt the accent was a little exaggerated but could have just been a regional difference.

I thought it was the 'that' , its a bit more forward/clearer/wider than how we would say it. Me at least.

Yes! I have noticed similarities between the Aussie accent and Americans accents from New Jersey or Queens. We both pronounce words like "Here" with a dipthong said: "Hee-ya" into two syllables.

Hi. That's good to hear and thanks for pointing out where there's room for improvement. Others have mentioned g'day, so maybe I wasn't totally in the groove yet. Sad to hear you've lost your yiya.

I flatted with a Welsh person in London and it took a while to work out that a yerr was a year!@@DaveHuxtableLanguages

I thought the pronunciation of the word "ports" was also just a little bit off, also seemed to get the bath/dance stuff a bit confused

Also the way he pronounced “schwa” :)

omg, yiya, i'm never going to not hiya that evə again

Thanks so much for your very informative comment.

Yes, no longer heard, but Con the Fruiterer’s accent was exactly the accent of railway announcements and milk bars (and fruit and veg shops) in late 60s to late 70s Australia, but out of currency by the time the Comedy Company came out. Those southern European migrants who ‘took over’ all those small businesses during this time, or worked in the ‘ordinary’ jobs other Aussies were happy to step out of, and didn’t let ‘Australian as a Second Language’ get in the way of getting on, made Straya an even better and more interesting place than it already was. I moved from the country to Newtown in Sydney to go to Uni in 1973. Was gobsmacked to see that so many of the shop signs in King St Newtown were in Greek (seemed like 75%). As a typical student of the day, I worked in a pub as a Bar Useful picking up glasses. A fellow Bar Useful was a retired Greek bloke who was one of the wave of migrants who came to Oz in the 50s. He’d owned a milk bar, worked hard to make a good living, raised his family and set them on their roads to life, sold the milk bar (to a family of more recently arrived Greeks) and retired. He took up Bar Usefulling because he wanted to keep active and it gave him a way to maintain contact with all the people in the area who had frequented his milk bar (probably for real hamburgers and cigarettes mainly, 60s!), many of whom who were also the regulars at the local pub. Now he had been in Oz for more than 25 years by then, using English daily, but Con the Fruiterer was an exemplar of diction and purity of speech in comparison. I was always having to ask him to repeat himself, or guess at what he was saying. His grammar was fine, but getting his tongue around the sound of words of Aussie English was like a, um, er, foreign language to him. His English pronunciation was so exaggerated in an Aussie way, that it sounded neither English nor Australian. Since coming to Oz, he had never been back to Greece, so now retired, he went back home for a visit. He was telling me about his trip, including how he had spoken no English during this time and of how the Greek language had idiomatically changed over the years (with its equivalents of ‘hey man’ ‘far out’ , 'dig it', ‘cool’ etc, that were then the vogue in the English speaking world, and that he was considered old-fashioned in how he spoke Greek). He finished with an anecdote about the journey back to Oz. His flight back involved a stop-over in Rome. He said that he was in the queue at Rome airport when, among the hubbub he detected an Aussie accent, and he said he was so excited at hearing it, he rushed over, and in what would have been full impenetrable Con the Fruiterer Plus, excitedly greeted these total strangers with “Ah Australian accent, bee-you-deful, I love it,” and telling them how wonderful it was to hear the native tones of his adopted country again. It turned out they were (mainly) a group of Aussies born to Italian migrants who were coming home from their own exploration of their roots, and after being initially startled by this mad Greek, worked out what was going on and nobody ended up being arrested for assault. Love our melting pot.

@@thickquinkly1560loved him

Wow. Thank you!

You were clearly an even bigger fan than I was. Yes, cell block H was A good one.

Thanks for the tips!

Great. Thanks for letting me know.

Not really though I grew up in Essex. I’ll have to check out the BBC accent archives.

I have a similar story for West Sussex, though the only similar accent I know of is the high cracking voice people used to adopt, years ago, as an impression of 16th century or earlier English.

Brits definitely don't think Aussies sound like Cockneys. The nasal twang and upward inflexion at the end of sentences isn't a Bitish thing, although, with American influence, the latter is slowly becoming normalised by younger people.

@@BillDavies-ej6ye We don't all do the upward inflection. It tends to be younger ppl, especially women. And you may not think we sound like Cockneys, but that's how you make us sound when you try to imitate us 😅

Slowed down Cockney but every sentence rises in pitch at the end like it is a question?

@@KindredBrujah no, that's an exaggeration.

potato scallops, togs. Guess where I am from, lol

No Idea! I say potato cakes and togs, so there must be a bit of a Venn diagram happening with usage! @@fionaottley4976

Verges, polony, blood noses.

@@fionaottley4976 I'd say probably Qld. probably north of Rocky

I don't like cockney... but you do it well.

Wow. Thank you. And thanks for all your comments - you were on a roll.

@@DaveHuxtableLanguages Haha yeah. Well, I was drunk. For better or worse.

Those of us who grew up in Castlemaine Victoria can always spot interlopers as they use a long a 😂

I love those - though the focus here was on pronunciation.

No-one says Facey 😂 and 'straya is often said sarcastically 😊

What is facey meant to be?

@@secretagentpaul9078 the social media platform, apparently

@@secretagentpaul9078I'm guessing he means Facebook. Fun fact though the term Selfie actually came from Melbourne, it's a classic Aussie shortening that caught on globally.

Yes... I agree!

That’s good to hear.

My pleasure. Best of luck to you!

Glad you enjoyed it

Hi bennyc

@@AussieEnglishPodcast wow thank you!

Personally in my experience, the "poo-l" thing has been way less of a regional thing and more of an age/generational thing. Across the country I've only heard old people say it that way. I'm in my 20s and only ever heard young people say it similarly to "pull". But that's just my experience

@@masterpage69420I agree

Yes I’ve heard that a lot in China.

That could could be related to hard attack as well. I think possibly they lengthen the last syllable slightly but still end with a glottal stop. It kind of tricks the non-rhotic ear into hearing a 'non-rhotic r', so to speak.

They might be from Beijing. They use a thing called 'er hua' which adds 'er' to the end of certain words. Curiously, it is taught as a standard part of Mandarin classes for non native speakers as well.

I can’t imagine that ordinary people spoke that differently from convicts, especially given the very minor crimes that people were transported for.

I think the story goes that they deliberately spoke in a 'posher' manner to differentiate themselves due to their perception of being 'better.'

@@DaveHuxtableLanguages South Australians do something unique; they pluralize things a lot. For instance they will say the brand Holden as Holdens. NO idea why.

I never knew people from Adelaide looked down on the rest of us. The rest of us never even think about Adelaide.

​@@musicalneptunianbecause Holden was originally South Australian. He had a big factory there before any GM involvement

That's what I noticed too growing up in far north Queensland, In far north Queensland we spoke with a completely different accent from southern Queensland There is a difference between north an south Queensland Same in NSW and when I move back to my families ancestral district on the NSW table lands there was a clear difference between regional NSW an the coastal English speaker's Spoken with a drawl sounds like hillbilly English or even ebor English my friend couldn't even understand people from ebor back country ha ha

Wow, thank you! I'm so glad to have brought you some joy. No, I don't write them out in IPA. It's quite hard to describe my 'method' if I have one. I definitely think all accents have an articulatory setting - tighten this muscle, relax that one, hold the lips like that. If I think of an accent, I can click into it. The phonetics comes later, where I can imitate something and then instrospect about what my mouth is doing to produce it.

@@DaveHuxtableLanguages I appreciate that insight into your method. My (American Midwest) ear is not so discerning. I have to be given the articulation and the sound together before I can make any sense of the differences. You provide both which is so appreciated.

It's all about the sound of the pronunciation, I have lived and worked all over Aus but everyone can pick I'm from the West Coast of Tas. went to High school in the Adelaide hills but the South Australian sound didn't rub off.

Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for your amusing comment.

An other part of Australian English is rhyming slang e.g Captain Cook = to have a look. This has declined over the last 20 years. If you want someone on TV who used to do it a bit Daryl Somers who hosted a show called hey hey it's Saturday.@@DaveHuxtableLanguages

I agree with this. There's basically a three-way split between northern, south-western, and south-eastern.

Glad to hear that! Thanks for commenting. So cultivated Essex sounds similar to cultivated Aussie. Makes sense.

Good to have you on board!

Thanks for sharing.

Thank you. One day I’ll come and do some in-person research.

Glad you enjoyed it. Yes, it’s sad how accents are becoming more alike.

German is a big part of what SA people have their own accent.

I wonder if at that point he's discussing the bunched r, he's confusing southern Australia (particularly south-eastern) with South Australia? That really not common in SA, but it is common for people to say SA but really mean Vic/southern NSW/ACT/Tas.