Why do AUSTRALIANS have STRANGE ACCENTS? 

We Aussies don't have an accent. It's only people in other countries who have accents while our speech is as pure as our sunshine.

I didn't think I had an accent until I traveled overseas. It was then I discovered that I could distinctly hear another Aussie from a long way off.

Took the Poms a couple of thousand years to stuff the English language. Only took us Aussies 200 years to fix it 😜

I worked with an Australian lady, who had moved to England for work, and honestly, I thought she was English when I first met her. She did not have a trace of an Australian accent, and sounded like she was from southern England. She was from South Australia, down the coast from Adelaide. She tells me that that is their accent in that part of the world. So not all Aussie accents are the same.

People stationed in Antarctica develop a group accent after a few months.

The Australian accent is from a process known as levelling, which is a combination of accents you’ve described deriving from people being understood by each other. The British who arrived after 1810 described the accent as ‘pure’ meaning there weren’t regional differences.

as an Aussie we can tell if you are from Adelaide or Melbourne or Sydney there are subtle differences in the way we speak

I read that cockney had the biggest influence on Aussie English. My theory is the descendants of the convicts and early settlers were impacted by both cockney and the queen’s English.

There are accents in the UK that are very close to a 'neutral' Australian accent as spoken in areas like Melbourne and Adelaide. I suspect the basis was that and then Irish and Scottish was added in to the mix like you say. One thing not mentioned is that Australians living overseas can easily drop their accent but it's hard for anyone to pick up an Australian accent. I'm told by a speech pathologist that Australians use an 'epiglottal slap' to start many words. This is a difficult thing to do and is uncomfortable for most non-Australians because it's something that is learnt very early in childhood. So, it's easy for Australians to reduce the slap but hard for others to adopt it.

Just spent a month in Germany where without fail my accent was recognised as Australian. So how is it that every American I’ve ever met says “Oh, so by your accent I guess you’re from England, right?”

Australians: we don’t have an accent. Also Australians: fight to the death over potato cake or potato scallop.

Interestingly, it’s been noted in international schools in Asia with a broad mix of backgrounds from India, UK, Singapore, etc etc sort of sound Australian, but with a slight American inflection on certain words. The American part being a media influence, the Australian part being a sort of flattening to fit all together.

I have read that it is called 'flattening.' They all had to pull their accents down, or flatten them, to be understood by each other.

So basically, what he said was, we have a ‘British’ accent. It’s British that are actually regional.

You may not be aware that Australia has subtle regional accents. I am from Adelaide and South Australia was the only colony which didn't have convicts only free settlers who would generally have been higher in the British class system although 3 of my 4 grandparents had convict ancestry from the eastern states. I now live in Queesnland and am often asked where in the UK I am from although a Brit would hear my accent as Australian. Melbourne also has a very distinct accent and I can always pick a person of British ancestry who are from Melbourne. I once had abusive troll in my RU-vid comments saying that Australians should learn to speak English properly. I replied that I do not speak English. I speak "Strine".

That is the clearest explanation I've heard, thanks from Australia

In the late 60's my Australian mother had her accent analyzed by a speech therapist and was told there was lots of Italian overtones.... My grandfather worked with many Italians building Melbourne infrastructure..... Dont forget that the current accent also has large swages of other countries accents. Just so you understand my father was Dutch, I can do such a passable accent of South Africa that a native born South African started to talk to me in Afrikaans.

You obviously forget the impact of the pervasive common fly in Australia; you dare not open your mouth to fully proclaim you voice and have to speak nasally through closed lips lest you swallow one

Hubby and emigrated to Perth in Western Australia in the early 80s. I noticed the Aussies had a habit of shortening words then adding an O. Your car registration was your rego, an island off our coast called Rottnest was Rotto. Some words though were lengthened with the O like my husband John who became Johno. I swore I would continue to use the words properly but of course I didn’t, I was soon speaking like the locals. Everyone was my mate or some type of Bastards… “silly bastard” or “that bastard over there”. I of course was a Pom which was fine as long as I didn’t become a “whinging Pom” or a “to and from Pom”. Italians were Dings and Greek/Slavs were Wogs. Our (now grown) sons have mates who are never called by the name their parents lovingly chose for them, there’s Pigga, Squeak, Dimmer and Damo. I’ve been here 40 yrs and wouldn’t live anywhere else, love the lifestyle, the sunshine and yes… the Aussie accent 😊

Lol. As a migrant Australian, who speaks Australian with a few slight differences, I should point out that New Zealanders sound quite different to us too. Their accents and pronunciations, to Australian ears at least, are quite obvious.

Clive James said it's what inevitably happens to an Englishman's accent when his face is contorted into a permanent squint from the Australian sun.

Thank you for explaining this. It makes a lot of sense to me. Our accent continues to change as the community becomes more global, but I miss hearing the way my maternal grandmother (who was born in the interwar period) spoke. Less and less Australian slang these days. In fact, I doubt my children would know most of it.

The main difference between the Australian and NZ accents is that Australia had a bigger Irish influence and NZ had a bigger Scottish influence. You can hear it if you listen to the differences.

We are the most multicultural country in the world. Every one of them has their own accent. You can tell the difference between Italian Aussie, Greek Aussie, Lebanese Aussie, Serbian Aussie, Vietnamese Aussie and so on. Recently a new family moved in across the road from my house, the lady had a very heavy German sounding accent, I just had to ask her to see if I was right, and yes she was German Aussie. I love my country, we are a chocolate box, and most of the time you can't tell, until they open their mouth's to speak.😂😂😂😂

Curiously, Mitchell and Delbridge (1965) "The Pronunciation of English in Australia" identified three varieties of Australian English: Broad Australian 34%; General Australian 55% and Cultivated Australian 11%. I'm not aware of any recent studies, but I'm sure that there will have been some changes. There have been some movies where the Broad Australian variety has been exaggerated. in 2022 about 50% of the population had a degree at a bachelor level or above.

*Everyone* has an accent but nearly everyone thinks they don't have an accent.

Travelling overseas and this Yank came up to me and asked (very slowly, one syllable at a time) “Do you speak English,” to which I replied in as Aussie as i could muster, “Yeah, nah, sorta”. That lovely look of total confusion priceless lol

The biggest influence on the Australian accent has a connection to the land. The wide open expanses - the focus on vowels. Just compare it to NZ with similar cultural background, but their vowels resemble the NZ land with clipped vowels.

This is spot on. I grew up in working class Sydney after the war and readily related to the British accents and customs I saw on the TV. Although white Australian each household would reflect something of their ancestry whether English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish.

WW1 in the trenches, an English army priest says to the newly arrived soldier from Australia: "My son did you come to this place to die?". The Aussie replies "No mate, I come here yester_die."

There is also a train of thought, that the Australian accent solidified during WW1, so the Australian soldiers would standout from British. If you listen to any Australian recordings in the early 1900’s Australians had an English sounding accent. After WW1, all audio recordings had distinct Australian accents. By the late 1880’s the majority of people living in Australia, were born in Australia. There was a generational conflict between the older generation who were born in Britain, and the next generation who were born in Australia. I’m sure this also played a large part in the development of our Accent.

I agree that it is a large component of the New Zealand accent too, but I think the Māori language and pronunciation subtleties introduced by transliterations have had a much larger contribution than people generally realise.

Others say it is most based on the 18thC London accent. Simon Roper did a video on London accents and the late 1700s one (as pronounced by him) sounded more like Australian than any of the others. Before that they sounded West Country-ish and after headed in the Cockney/Estuary type direction. So you could say Australian was influenced by a very particular moment in London accents.

Accents are fascinating! And I didn't know this about Aussie and Kiwi accents, so I've learned something. Also, Cantebury Cathedral is a wonderful backdrop...so (and I say this very gently) for future reference...can you PLEASE keep still. I had motion sickness watching you moving around!!

G'DAY David, how ya going, Aussie here, I have learnt a lot of fair dinkum on your channel today with regards to the origins of Australian accents - good on ya mate !!!!

The differences are also highly noticeable by state/territory. I'm from South Australia/Adelaide, and when I went to Melbourne and Sydney, it was clear I sounded much more English than the Eastern states population do, it's just because the region of SA was a Free Settlement not a penal colony. The Eastern states also tend to use the American pronunciation of words such as "plant", "dance", etc with the A which sounds more like an E. It's quite interesting.

We also have 3 types of Australian accents.Broad, Neutral and Cultured. The broad they suspect also came about from slurring speech from drinking alcohol and needing to keep their mouth slightly closed to avoid swallowing flies.Think of broad accents like Steve Irwin and Paul Hogan as examples.

We don’t have a problem it’s the bloody poms that speaks funny 😳

I'm a Sydney-sider. I've noticed that a lot of people in South-Western Sydney (Bankstown area) have a slighly different accent because many are from Middle-Eastern backgrounds. I'm interested to see what other Aussies think about that.

I'm now living in Australia, I have been here for almost 8 years and I am now going to love being able to tell fellow Australians this! I am a true Bristolian and I don't think I will ever take on the Aussie accent! 😂

It's good to know that, in time and with more and more travel aroiund the UK, you guys over there will all end up speaking Australian. Always good to get an upgrade!

Interesting that Kiwis with much the same mix, have a similar but slightly different accent. Maybe it was not having as many convicts :-)

I was taught Received Pronounciation or R.P. English at school in Sydney. I think it was agreed by educationalists that this was the preferred English accent, taught to BBC broadcasters apparently. It was also taught in South Africa, New Zealand and India. I speak quite differently to a lot of other Australians and I never realised why until I started watching RU-vid videos on pronunciation. My parents also spoke Received English, which is fascinating, especially since my father's family were very early Colonialists.

It's interesting to me when people say British when it comes to accents, when in Britain the accent changes from town to town. It shows a dense population in smaller spaces have a lot to do with accents forming.

As a teenager, I went to an English language school in a non-English speaking country. Our parents all said we pupils had an accent of our own. The various accents- English, South African, Canadian, New Zealand, Australian et cetera merged to create something new. I first heard the (fairly obvious) idea that the children of the First Fleet formed the new sound in a documentary John Clarke (a New Zealander!) made about the Australian accent. I recognised the reality straight away. I'd also suggest that children who arrived at Sydney Cove barely speaking English- Cornish, Gaelic Scots, Irish- also contributed to the accent as they worked & played with their new chums.

They were called the Currency kids, those who were born here first, and they had Aussie accents from the get-go. All the early historians noted that, "the currency kids have a weird accent".

As an Aussie I am amazed to know that in 1820 it was noticed something funny was happening with our accent.

As an aussie i was told that it was a product of colonial settlers getting drunk and sluring their words and that speech passed down to their children and so forth.

That’s all true, but the other key factor is related to the way Aboriginal people talk. If you listen to Aboriginal intonation and flattening of vowel sounds you can very much appreciate how influential they were on how we talk.

Wow… David I learnt something today,that makes complete sense, also as we were settled mainly in the early 1800’s shipping and movement in general meant we traversed our country constantly thereby maintaining a general Aussie accent nationally.

That is very interesting, thanks for sharing - cheers mate 🍻

Amazing! I’m Aussie and had no idea but had always wondered.. Thank you so much for the knowledge 😊

I've often wondered whether the Australian accent is similar to the way people spoke in Britain at the time of the first settlers. The hymn-writer Charles Wesley, writing at about that time - the late 18th century - rhymed, for example, "join" with "thine".

The colonial founder effect is one thing, where you end up with a diverse set of accents when plopped halfway around the world that have to mend. But there is influence by every immigrant group that came after too, and obvious example isn't accent itself, but word choice. Italian immigrants gave Australia the zucchini, but the French gave the UK the courgette. Also aboriginal language as transmitted through animal and place names has had some influences the Australian accent in subtle ways that will be difficult to untangle, mainly because of the loss of speakers of many of the aboriginal languages that were in contact first. As a perculiar holdover from the colonial days is that in Australia bedding is often still called "Manchester" from the days when Manchester was the industrial centre of the cotton trade. It ironically makes sense that it stuck in Australia where it isn't as a confusing term unlike in the UK.

That was so interesting thanks for making this

As a guy who’s not Australian and has an ‘Australian accent’ I can confirm I have no idea where my accent came from…

I heard our nasal accent developed by listening to so many crows "aark, aark, aark" growing up 🐦‍⬛😸

100% remember an ABC australia doco years again which came to this conclusion. at the same time it mentioned the pushback against it, 2nd/3rd gen australians with clipped english accents (north shore types) decrying the gutter language around them.

Also, There was no actual money in Australia at the time. Thus Rum became the currency, and the effects upon speech also added 'complexity' to our accent.

There are *three* overall Australian accents General (spoken by most people) Cultivated (similar to RP) and Broad (Crocodile Dundee). Foreigners are often shocked to discover almost nobody sounds like Crocodile Dundee or that many Australians sound 'English'.

A former employee, an Englishman living here in Adelaide, told me that if he fronted the bar in the next village to his, a 10 minute walk away, he'd have trouble understanding the bloke next to him, even though they'd both have grown up in their respective villages!

I had never really thought about how the accent developed, but I had noticed that the accent varies surprisingly little across the huge country. Apart from a few local variations in word usage, the accent itself seems to be determined more by social position and education.

I have I guess a neutral Australian accent, and Ive travelled a lot throughout Asia. A lot of expats there (Brits, Americans, Europeans) as well as some people in Asia there - had said they thought Australians speak very clearly. I'd never really thought about that?! I actually didnt think we generally did particularly. But this vid kinda explains it. Flattening of the sounds so early settlers etc could understand each other!

Very informative, thank you

It’s interesting that over a VAST area of land (most of it I admit uninhabited) that there’s buggerall difference in inflection and syllable stress between the States. There are particular words and expressions that are used in different States, but it’s a very very generic accent. We all have to ask each other “what part of Oz are you from” to be sure. Mostly I don’t even think to ask because I just assume the people are locals. Occasionally, somebody will say they’re from Broome or Darwin or far north Queensland and really, their “accents” haven’t really given me the heads up. It might be something that they’re wearing. That might give me a clue. There are a few words that the people from South Australia use, and how they pronounce words with “lour” in them, that I can be pretty sure they’re from say, Adelaide. But other than that, our accent is Amazingly homogenous, considering the tyranny of distance that it has to cover. Some say that the country people speak slower, maybe there’s something in that. But the actual accent, apart from the pace, doesn’t sound too different. America is about the same size as us but of course is far more inhabited. They have SO many accents, you can even tell in New York what borough they come from. It’s interesting to hear you say about the children of the first anglo settlers all mixing together, whereas back in Britain they’d have never ever met. I think the one thing with out accentless accent is it’s class based. We all sound like Aussies, but some are “posher” than others. Chris Hemsworth does a very funny take on it. He & his brothers are dead set Aussies as soon as they open their mouths, but they can “do” all the Socio economic accents that prevail. And they’re bloody hilarious doing it. Thanks for all your research, it’s an interesting topic. My mate is from Cork in Ireland. She says she can pick which side of the river someone lives, down to the Pub on the corner, it is that parochial. My Great Grand Father came from there, but now I sound like one of those little 1st immigrant kids.

Australian English is actually the most pure English. The settlers needed to change so they could understand each other.

And there is a version of Aussie accents too those who live in Queensland sound different to those who live in South Australia or Victoria, not much of a difference but it's there.

By that logic so should New Zealanders and most Canadians? Where I live in Adelaide, South Australia it was a convict free state and all settlers were free settlers and the first waves came from Cornwall in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and quite a lot of Germans and Austrians then the next wave came from Eastern Europe, all over Britain, Ireland and in the country Afghan herders began arriving. This doesn't make for a classic English or "British" accent but now in modern times Adelaide is considered the most English of all the regional accents? The old money upper class english took over the finance industry but besides them most early Adelaide people were Cornish, Yorkshireman, Scottish, Irish and German which makes for 5 or 6 very distinct and different accents? Somehow after over 200 years the Adelaide accent developed into a southern coastal english accent? Which is a very clear and standard english accent and not a strong or upper class one. It's quite weird really? The rest of Australia especially Sydney and Melbourne had arrivals from British prisons but tons of free settlers also arrived from all over the world especially once it was established Australia was a safe place to migrate to and there was gold and other metals in abundance. They developed different accents altogether from each other though despite the similarities?.

There's a slight variation in Australian and New Zealand accents which potentially comes from their own indigenous peoples.

I’m a Brit living in New Zealand. I was having a conversation the other day about how the Australian and New Zealand accent may have developed. Fascinating.

Wow. Fantastic video!

The Australian accent varies a lot across society, from the plummy Eastern Suburbs 'ABC newsreader' accent to the broad working class 'strine' version. It also varies from city to rural areas. The wierd thing is that this same range of accents is found in every state of Australia with very little regional variation - despite how far apart out major urban centres are. I think this must be the result of a more mobile society where people moved around from place to place but stuck with their peers in the same 'class', compared to traditional British regions where people didn't venture out of their local area much at all. Maybe also there wasn't enough time for regional variations to establish before radio and TV brought everyone together liguistically.

My wife, being a linguist, has talked about this phenomenon. She says that it take about 40 years (a generation) to establish a new dialect or accent of a regional language, so what you said regarding Down Under sounds about right. And yes, that and other great bits of info can be found in David's book, 'A Bash With The British Empire'. It's a good book and an easy read. It's a must have beside your loo for those long sessions.

This phenomenon exists in military bases located in foreign countries, too. I had a friend who grew up in an army base in Dortmund, Germany. His parents were Southern English but he went to school with kids from all over the UK. His accent came out predominantly Northern and East Anglian. "Aye up, have you got alight boy?"

Nice video... Thanks ! *See 'ship English' based on the idea that these disparate peoples spent three or so months together on ships travelling from Britain to Australia and may likely have had to alter the way they spoke so they could understand each other... So, the accent may well have begun its journey from there... Also worth thinking about is, if the colonial children's 'new' accents were noted by others from the 1820s, what would the notorious Irish-Victorian Kelly family, most infamously, Ned, have sounded like in the 1870s, nearly two generations later? Not 'Irish', we can deduce, unlike how movie portrayals have forever led us to believe... Rather, perhaps more like we do today, and even less like Australians did during the early-to-mid 20th Century when Australians, no longer 'colonial' but now belonging to a federated commonwealth nation, became obsessed with trying to sound royally posh (RP... see PM Menzies, newsreels, and all those 'cultivated' speakers of Australian English)! 😂

When I was travelling Europe many years, I was asked if I was from South Africa. Then I was asked if I was from New Zealand. When I replied I'm from Soith Australia they were shocked. I said I sound like other Aussies with parents from the Mediterranean. I call my accent wog aussie

And the Australian accent varies slightly from State to State. As an Aussie, it's quite easy to determine Victorian and New South Wales natives from South Australians by the pronunciation of certain words which may be the result of South Australia being settled by many German immigrants.

We don’t have strange accents. English cockney, Yorkshire, Liverpool & so many other places in England have REALLY STRANGE ACCENTS. Australians have a beautiful accent.

This is quite interesting. Makes perfect sense too

four tours Vietnam I didn't give a fuck what accent he had as long as he was watching my back

I've always thought that the predominant influence on the Australian way of speaking was London cockney. It's crazy to say they 'don't have an accent'...all English speakers do! I know mine is a motley assortment of Yorkshire, London, 'RP', and the odd Scots turn of phrase...all diluted by 25 years of living abroad!

Very interesting! I've always been a little curious about this!🤔

What is also interesting is that there is no real regional difference between the Australian accent. Given the size of Australia and how remote townships and cities are you would have thought there would be a range of different accents similar to England or say a Boston accent to a southern Georgian accent. As someone from the Northern East coasts of Australia there is no real distinguishable difference between my accent and someone from Perth which is literally thousands of kilometers away and the same thing could be said for people from Adelaide for example. Yet in England you travel 100km and it almost like you have entered a new country.

On my 39 day holiday to Britain in 2012, I never said G’Day to anyone, I would just say good morning, or afternoon, and watch with amusement at the faces of those people I was talking to change into a query of where are you from look, then they couldn’t help themselves and had to ask “where are you from?”. Had a wonderful time in the UK, and hope to get back before too long.

If that is true then why don't any other British colonies have Australian sounding accents ???

Wow, as an Aussie I did not know. Very cool in a way hahah

I believe the hotter climate in Australia also slowed the different British accents down and melted them all together into the Australian accent. Our accent is still evolving as the different people from Asia and India migrate here. I heard a blonde haired blue eyed girl of about 7 or 8 speaking with an Indian accent despite her parent not being Indian. Her teachers at school had mostly been heavily accented and of Indian origin. Many young Australians are developing some strange sort of world accent. You dont know if they're Asian or Canadian. New Zealanders speak in a tight-lipped sort of accent because it's so bloody cold there, they don't want to breathe too much cold air in.

My London friend told me that they spent hours looking for a town called 'China Ponds', only to eventually discover that 'Chain of Ponds' was indeed very attractive.

Apparently my reckneck cousins in South Carolina have a more authentic historical British accent than most British people.

Even well into the 1990's we had a two accent system. Highly educated people spoke 'The Queen's English' and you couldn't work somewhere like in the ABC without cultivating that accent (which was quite close to English but not as flowery as kensington). Common people had a much thicker Australian accent than we do today. These two accents have melded together over the last 30 years. I grew up in Far North Queensland in the 80's and had a very thick accent which I had to try to drop when I moved south due to peer pressure (many Victorians couldn't understand me easily). I then spent 20 years in Asia, mostly in the company of British colleagues and now that I've returned to Australia, I think I have a much milder Australian accent. However, people keep asking me if I'm Scottish. Go figure...

Thank you. That was fascinating. Makes sense too!

I can hear remnants of the Cockney accent in the Australian accent

Aussie guy was asked: "What is the difference between and buffalo and a bison?" His reply: "That's simple. You can't wash your hands in buffalo....."

That's really interesting! Thank you.

I heard that the accent developed in outback areas where there are so many flies that people have to talk with their teeth clenched to avoid swallowing flies every time they spoke. It then became necessary to exaggerate pronunciation in order to project the voice. I heard this theory probably on ABC Radio National back in the 90s.

What do you think of the theory that the Aussie slur developed from alcoholism in the early days? Rum was used as currency.

It scares me that if I time travelled, for the first 50 years in my city, Sydney, I would hear no Australian accent. BUT, in my lifetime a new accent has arisen out of the western suburbs - and it's not a million miles (metaphorically) from MLE (Multicultural London English). Same cause and effect, similar (but not identical) ethnic influences. 20 years ago the locals self-identified as "Choko" and "Chokos" to distinguish themselves from white skinned Australians or "skips" (Skippy, kangaroos, locals). Just like in Sydney 200 years ago, and just like in London today, their accent had tell-tales of their parents' language, but they couldn't speak their parents' languages (unless it was also English). And today the kids of every skin colour are speaking it, so it's not even a marker across ethnic lines anymore - it denotes class, for now perhaps, maybe not for long - again, just like London and MLE.

I am an Australian born in melbourne grew up in Brisbane lived all over but went to uk in 2005. Constantly told by patients families and colleagues quite rudely that I had a strong twang. When I came home last year 20 years away everyone tells me I sound posh or just like a pom ❤

There’s something I’ve dubbed the “Bar Test.” Both ‘a’ and ‘r’ have two distinct sounds within accents of the spoken English language. ‘A’ is pronounced as either, again these are just my terms, a high ‘a’ or a low ‘a.’ High is more like an ‘ah’ whereas low is more like an ‘a’ (as in ‘back’ but not quite when accompanied by an empty end or ‘r’ sound). ‘R’s are either rhotic or non-rhotic, rhotic meaning they’re pronounced and non-rhotic meaning, well, not pronounced. With that out of the way, the test. Bar with a high ‘a’ and a non-rhotic ‘r’: English (Sounds like ‘Bah’) Bar with a low ‘a’ and a rhotic ‘r’: Irish (Sounds like ‘Baer’) Bar with a high ‘a’ and a rhotic ‘r’: American (Sounds like, well, ‘Bar’) Bar with a low ‘a’ and a non-rhotic ‘r’: Australian (Sounds like ‘Baeh’) Interesting little thing to show off.

So we speak pure English!