If you are below the age of five, you can expect to develop a legitimate Australian accent fairly quickly. If, on the other hand, you're old enough to have typed this question all by yourself, you're almost certainly old enough that you will always retain some vestiges of your original accent.
The English accent is the one that is victorious, with the latest survey showing that 17 per cent of people have it at the top of their list. French came in next at 13 per cent, which is unsurprising considering that this is the language spoken in the city of love.
Unlike some of the strong accents and dialects used back in England, the Australian accent was clear and easy to understand, because it was developed by people trying to understand each other!
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. The very early form of Australian English would have been first spoken by the children of the colonists born into the early colony in Sydney.
While indigenous Australians had developed over 250 different languages at the time of European colonisation, non-indigenous Australians simply haven't been around long enough to develop regional accents. And as an English-speaking immigrant population, it was their common language that bound them together.
The most common verbal greeting is a simple “Hey”, “Hello”, or “Hi”. Some people may use Australian slang and say “G'day” or “G'day mate”. However, this is less common in cities. Many Australians greet by saying “Hey, how are you?”.
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.
According to linguists, there are three main kinds of Aussie accent: broad (think former Prime Minister Bob Hawke), general (closer to Kevin Rudd) and cultivated (like Malcolm Fraser).
Strine, also spelled Stryne /ˈstraɪn/, describes a broad accent of Australian English.
Australian English is most similar to British English in spelling and sentence construction, although its accent and vocabulary are very distinct from the UK.
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.
While some Australian speakers would pronounce “no” as a diphthong, starting on “oh” as in dog and ending on “oo” as in put, others begin with an unstressed “a” (the sound at the end of the word “sofa”), then move to the “oh” and then “oo”.
Broad Australian accents are typically strong and more difficult to understand. This is the one most commonly known by people outside of Australia or joked about by comedians. However it is not the most commonly spoken. Cultivated Australian accents tend to sound more proper and resemble formal British English.
In general, Australian pronunciations are more similar to British English pronunciations than to American pronunciations. While American English puts the stress on the final syllable, Australian English and British English stress an earlier syllable.
A few historians believe that the slight 'drool' or 'slurring' which with Australians speak can be traced back to the fact that so many of the first Englishmen, colonizers, sailors and prisoners were drunk often, and that the children, upon hearing this garbled, mushy type of speaking, picked it up and passed it along.
British, Australian, and Irish accents are the top 3 foreign accents people find to be most attractive. When it comes to attraction, 80% of people feel that accents make someone more attractive, with 77% saying someone's accent was what attracted them to a person.
There are still some differences in the Aussie accent between states and between city and country, but the broader Australian accents seem to be disappearing and becoming more homogenized. An Australian accent is still quite distinctive and discernible when heard overseas away from Australia.
"Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi" is a cheer or chant often performed at Australian sport events. It is a variation of the Oggy Oggy Oggy chant used by both soccer and rugby union fans in Great Britain from the 1960s onwards. It is usually performed by a crowd uniting to support a sports team or athlete.
Certainly if you're in the US, your mother is your “mom” – short for “mommy” and in the UK, Australia and New Zealand it's “mum” – shortened from “mummy”.
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!
"When you tell an Australian that there's an 'r' in the way we pronounce 'no' they're like 'Mmm… no, there's not,'" says Hume. That's because the Australian accent is non-rhotic, so an "r" isn't pronounced unless it comes before a vowel.
In Australian English, diminutives are usually formed by taking the first part of a word, and adding an ending such as a, o, ie, or y.