Social Science Australian dialects

[Cuzz09]

When I was over in USA majority asked where in England or New Zealand I was from... it annoyed me and made me really lay on the Occa Aussie more.

"Ohh yeah nah mate she'll be right"

On [device_name] using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[CakeEater]

Apparently the South Australian dialect stems from the fact that out of all the colonies they didnt have prisoners in there.

Hence their accents sounded more upper class.

 

[GreyCrow]

Apparently the South Australian dialect stems from the fact that out of all the colonies they didnt have prisoners in there.

Hence their accents sounded more upper class.

Because we are

 

[iluvparis]

I grew up in Melbourne but have super broad accent

Castle/Graph in the trap form
Class in the bath form

 

[Silent Alarm]

When I was teaching teaching in Taiwan I used log and frog as examples of words that rhyme. My Chinese teacher aide said to me afterwards, "Those words don't rhyme". I said, "Of course they do". She said, "Not in American English. In American English it's log and frawg".

In my mind I automatically pronounced these in an American accents.

Even wif an Essix accen', it's lo-g n fro'g.

With California English, it's lahg, frahg.

Even with a Joisey accent it's lowwwwg, frowwg.

Rhymes are rhymes regardless of accent. Surely?

 

[Frank Bunn]

Is it an accent thing or standard Aussie to pronounce the letter 'l' in the middle of words as a 'y' sound? Like Austrayia or miyyion (million).

 

[Papa G]

The chick in the Lite n Easy ad is your classic Malbun accent. The way she says halthy makes my ears bleed.

 

[Papa G]

Is it an accent thing or standard Aussie to pronounce the letter 'l' in the middle of words as a 'y' sound? Like Austrayia or miyyion (million).

East Coast/bogan thing mainly.

 

[Plugger35]

When I was over in USA majority asked where in England or New Zealand I was from... it annoyed me and made me really lay on the Occa Aussie more.

"Ohh yeah nah mate she'll be right"

On [device_name] using BigFooty.com mobile app

I got the same thing when I was there, if you didn't sound like Crocodile Dundee you often got mistaken for being English, we also say a lot of similar words like calling candy "lollies" and cigarettes "****" which just adds to the confusion.

 

[Scotland]

Seppos are just insular morons. They ask anyone they think has an English accent (or Australian, New Zealand, wherever) 'Are you British?'. I've never heard an Aussie ask that question. The odd 'what part of England are you from?' to someone from Scotland, Wales or Ireland but generally we're OK at picking accents. Do Americans ask Germans, French etc. 'Are you from Europe?'...? I can usually pick a German/Dutch/Italian/Spanish/French speaker speaking English, but I couldn't separate a German from an Austrian or a Spaniard from a Colombian etc.

There's a small percentage (well I hope it's small) of Americans that don't know that Australians and New Zealanders speak English as their first language. There's a significant percentage who are baffled by the Metric system. I don't baffled as in trying to convert inches to cm in your head or remember what the **** a furlong is, but baffled as in trying to fill out a form in a language you've never seen before. It's an indictment on their education system.

 

[Gough]

The real skill is picking the difference between a Zim and a South African accent. I had an ancient history tutor who was stunned when I asked him what part of Zim he was from.

 

[Catfish Alley]

My work is probably 25% American and they're pretty good at dealing with people from around the world. Can't say any were surprised I spoke English. Haha. Dealing with metric and US standard measurements does suck though.

 

[Dav]

Us Darwinites tend to speak in a lot broader accent I find, and with a lot more of a localised dialect. My family have moved back down to Adelaide, and with my sisters having spent 4 formative years in Darwin, their general vocabulary and vernacular is very different.

 

[Bradesmaen]

East Coast/bogan thing mainly.

**** that grinds my gears living in London with all these eastern staters.. no one can say Australia properly. I want to punch them.

 

[Scotland]

My work is probably 25% American and they're pretty good at dealing with people from around the world. Can't say any were surprised I spoke English. Haha. Dealing with metric and US standard measurements does suck though.

I've worked with many South Africans and a few Zimbabweans and I battle with this. Easier to distinguish between an English/Afrikaans South African, the latter having the harsher accent.

NFI as far as the 9 non-white languages of SA go. Even though they sound different I can't tell them apart as accents.

 

[Bostonian]

Apparently the South Australian dialect stems from the fact that out of all the colonies they didnt have prisoners in there.

Hence their accents sounded more upper class.

Don't believe that as a complete answer. It's not like the upper classes were swarming to Australia to set up shop.

All it probably means is that there might have been an influx from some of the home counties in England to that area.

Port Adelaide also had a lot of Irish free settlers come through it as well and the Irish and common Brits contributed heavily to what is now seen as an "aussie" accent.

It was probably a suburb to suburb thing as I doubt there would have been any upper class accents dominating areas like Port Adelaide.

 

[Spongebob]

My work is probably 25% American and they're pretty good at dealing with people from around the world. Can't say any were surprised I spoke English. Haha. Dealing with metric and US standard measurements does suck though.

I was once congratulated on how well I spoke English and asked where I learned it. This was when I was a grad student in the US.

 

[craigos]

Wait, some Americans think English is our second language? What is our first? I think you've been hanging out in trailah parks too much Scotland

 

[Catfish Alley]

I think a lot of countries have some misconceptions of Australia - not just pockets of the US.

 

[Papa G]

The average American knows about as much about Australia as the average Australian knows about Switzerland.

Just because we and the rest of the world are bombarded with American culture, don't think that it is reciprocated.

 

[Scotland]

Wait, some Americans think English is our second language? What is our first? I think you've been hanging out in trailah parks too much Scotland

It's pretty rare but they are out there. I know more than one person that has been told 'You speak English really well' while over there.

A small percentage of them think they speak American, Mexicans speak Mexican etc.

Jimmy Kimmel's recent 'can you name a country' thing on his show just shows their mindset. It's not that they're all stupid or even that a higher percentage of them are stupid, but they are incredibly insular. I know that our first PM was Edmund Barton, and since I've been alive it's been Hawke, Keating, Howard, Rudd-Gillard-Rudd, Abbott, Turnbull. If you asked me the progression of PMs after WWII to the 70s I'd be pretty scratchy, but I know that Berlin is the capital of Germany, Angela Merkel is their Chancellor, their currency is the Euro and was historically the Deutschmark and they speak German. I reckon plenty of Americans couldn't get all those basics about Germany but could rattle off who the 17th of 45 US presidents was.

I think a lot of countries have some misconceptions of Australia - not just pockets of the US.

True, but there's only a handful of countries in the anglophone sphere. Australia, NZ, Canada, US all came from the spread of the British Empire. There's a natural link.

 

[Scotland]

The average American knows about as much about Australia as the average Australian knows about Switzerland.

Just because we and the rest of the world are bombarded with American culture, don't think that it is reciprocated.

Less.

The average Australian has a hierarchy of knowledge with Australia at the top, then decreasing down the line from the UK and Ireland, USA, NZ, Canada, teams we play at sports like South Africa and India, major European nations, major Asian nations, minor European nations, minor Asian nations and South America etc. and right at the bottom you have small nations in Africa and the Pacific. Your average Aussie doesn't have a lot of grey matter dedicated to Tokelau and Burundi.

There's a degree of cultural cringe in Australia where people want to appear more worldly. We're separated geographically from the countries we are culturally most similar to. I would imagine the percentage of Australians who travel outside Australia (Bali doesn't count) would be higher than that who travel from America, even if we do act like complete dickheads.

 

[Plugger35]

I met quite a few Americans that hadn't even traveled out of their own states let alone traveled overseas, there's probably some Australians like that too but it wouldn't be as common.

 

[Silent Alarm]

Americans are ignorant idiots, basically. I don't have a remarkable voice, accent but so many times I was asked what language I was speaking (wtf) and in big cities with large migrant populations, tourism, all sorts passing through and living in the same city.

I remember trying to grab a sandwich one and this girl kept asking 'whaaat? You want what? Let us? You want me to let you?' At the end she was so flabbergasted she asked where I was from like I was going to reply 'ah, Estonia.' Then she asked me what language I was speaking...

They're ignorants and they really don't care what anyone else thinks of them. The French do it in a respectable way but Americans are so pigheaded and just plain dumb.

 

[The Speaker]

It's pretty rare but they are out there. I know more than one person that has been told 'You speak English really well' while over there.

A small percentage of them think they speak American, Mexicans speak Mexican etc.

Jimmy Kimmel's recent 'can you name a country' thing on his show just shows their mindset. It's not that they're all stupid or even that a higher percentage of them are stupid, but they are incredibly insular. I know that our first PM was Edmund Barton, and since I've been alive it's been Hawke, Keating, Howard, Rudd-Gillard-Rudd, Abbott, Turnbull. If you asked me the progression of PMs after WWII to the 70s I'd be pretty scratchy, but I know that Berlin is the capital of Germany, Angela Merkel is their Chancellor, their currency is the Euro and was historically the Deutschmark and they speak German. I reckon plenty of Americans couldn't get all those basics about Germany but could rattle off who the 17th of 45 US presidents was.

To be fair, Kimmel's show is always going to show the most absurd answers - assuming they aren't paid to say them.

But yes, they are more insular because they can afford to be. What interest should Goliath have in little David?