"Standard southern English came to be what is called RP, Received Pronunciation, Oxbridge, that kind of accent.
In Australia, this dialect is sometimes called Strine /ˈstɹɑɪn/ (or "Strayan" /ˈstɹæɪən/, a shortening of the word Australian), and a speaker of the dialect may be referred to as an Ocker.
Australian English arose from a dialectal 'melting pot' created by the intermingling of early settlers who were from a variety of dialectal regions of Great Britain and Ireland, though its most significant influences were the dialects of Southeast England.
Australian English is a regional dialect of the English language. Within the Australian English dialect, there are three major subgroups: Standard Australian English. Aboriginal English.
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 ...
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.
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.
Zed is widely known to be used in British English. But it's also used in almost every English-speaking country. In England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Australia, India, Canada (usually), and New Zealand, Z is pronounced as zed.
Today, this means that there are three types of Australian accent. Some people speak with a “general” accent, which is more or less the way it has been for centuries. Other people speak with an accent that is closer to RP English. The third group of people have a “broad” Australian accent.
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.
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.
In reference to the British, first attested in Australia in 1912 as rhyming slang for immigrant with additional reference to the likelihood of sunburn turning their skin pomegranate red.
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.
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 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.
“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.
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.
General Australian accent is the most common accent spoken in Australia and is primarily spoken by people living in the metropolitan areas. This variation often uses more American and British words rather than idioms and words.
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”.
Clips of Australians saying this short, two-letter word have been trending on TikTok over the last year, with listeners fascinated by its pronunciation. Speakers from outside Australia are also having a go at pronouncing the word themselves. Interestingly, when they write it out, they spell the word “naur”.
So, we would say, instead of 'can't', we don't say the /t/ and instead we just say 'can't', and the tongue stops the air, 'can't'. So, it sounds like a very, very, very short N sound instead of a long N sound.
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.
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!
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.