The Australian English accent has been evolving for more than 200 years and its evolution is driven primarily by children. The clipped British tones of old have mostly gone replaced by a language that reflects the diverse and multicultural nature of Australia.
Three main varieties of Australian English are spoken according to linguists: broad, general and cultivated. They are part of a continuum, reflecting variations in accent.
According to Richards, the beginning of our Australian accent emerged following the arrival of European settlers in 1788. "It emerged from a process called levelling down because you had all these people who came here on 11 ships from different dialect areas, regional dialect areas across England," he said.
In Australia there is not a lot of regionally-based accent variation compared with most other world Englishes, however, there are lots of vocabulary differences. See Macquarie Dictionary's Australian Word Map for some details.
Australian English can be described as a new dialect that developed as a result of contact between people who spoke different, mutually intelligible, varieties of English.
If you find the British accent difficult to understand, it's likely you'll find the Aussie accent even harder to grasp as, for the most part, Australia is a melting pot of all the different regional dialects of British English.
An Australian accent is still quite distinctive and discernible when heard overseas away from Australia. We still shorten our words and use “ie” at the end of some words, e.g. sickie (taking sick leave from work), breakie (breakfast). But the real Australian slang is vanishing.
The most widely accepted theory to why Australians have the accent they do is that the first Australian born children (of the colonizers, not the natives obviously) simply created the first trace of the recognizable accent amongst themselves naturally.
New Zealand. The New Zealand accent is most similar to Australian accents (particularly those of Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales and South Australia) but is distinguished from these accents by the presence of three "clipped" vowels, slightly resembling South African English.
Let's face it, most of us are suckers for a sexy accent. According to a recent survey conducted by the popular dating website MissTravel.com, over 2000 American men and women regard Australian accents as one of the sexiest in the world.
Within Australia, there are three different types of accents — broad, general and cultivated. Broad would be associated with a more “bogan” type accent, cultivated sounds slightly more English and general sits somewhere between the two.
The Mainstream Australian Accent is a distinct accent produced by native English speakers in Australia. It's a tough accent to replicate, even for actors in Hollywood.
The Australian National Dictionary explains that the Australian usages of mate derive from the British word 'mate' meaning 'a habitual companion, an associate, fellow, comrade; a fellow-worker or partner', and that in British English it is now only in working-class use.
Perhaps the most significant influencers on Australian English is that of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages.
In a 1950 copy of Meanjin, Phillips used the term 'cultural cringe' to define the penchant for Australians to see their artists and writers' work as inferior to anything from overseas, Britain and the United States in particular. As a consequence, many Australians in the cultural field spent time or moved overseas.
“How ya goin'?” is the ultimate Aussie greeting. If you're not from Australia, this mash-up of “How are you?” and “Where are you going?” might leave you a little perplexed. If it helps, think of how the Brits say “y'alright?” - it requires no detailed response. In fact, a simple “hey!” will suffice.
One of the first things you'll notice about Australia will no doubt be the very unique speaking habits of its people. Australians speak fast, 'chew' words and skip pronunciation of letters – combine this with their penchant for slang and abbreviations, and you have a language that's quite difficult to comprehend!
There are qualities of 'cockney' that are present in the Australian accent. But it's quite distinct. So, if you're doing a word like 'laugh' -- aagh, aagh -- go back to that hesitation sound. It's that 'A' sound that happens in the middle of the mouth, 'laugh.
Some key features of the Australian accent are the schwa, /ə/, the non-rhotic /r/ sound (listen to an Australian say a word with the /r/ sound, and then listen to an American say the same word and you can here the distinct difference in the way that the /r/ phoneme is pronounced and stressed), heavily nasalised vowel ...
"The basis of our accent is Southern British. Americans, in particular, often confuse us. They think the cockney accent is the Australian accent."
Here in Australia, however, McDonald's most prevalent nickname is “Macca's”. A recent branding survey commissioned by McDonald's Australia found that 55 per cent of Australians refer to the company by its local slang name.