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.
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.
The Aussie accent started with kids
The Aussie accent, as we know it today, started more than 200 years ago with the children of the convicts, soldiers and other European arrivals. The parents spoke with all different kinds of English accents because they came from many places in England.
A lot of people think Australian English is basically Cockney when in fact the London, or East End of London, accent is just one of the components.
Australian English is most similar to British English in spelling and sentence construction, although its accent and vocabulary are very distinct from the UK.
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.
The distinctive Australian accent is the result of a “drunken slur” caused by the heavy drinking of the early settlers, according to a communication expert from the country. "It's not just about pronunciation; vocal quality or timbre matters, as does intonation – the way the pitch of the voice rises and falls."
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).
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 ...
G'day (guh-day) / Hello.
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.
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”.
The Australian accent is famous for its vowel sounds, absence of a strong “r” pronunciation and the use of an inflection – or intonation – at the end of sentences, which can make statements sound like questions. According to Felicity, the way vowels are pronounced is the most peculiar feature of Australian English.
"Barbie" is Australian slang for barbecue and the phrase "slip a shrimp on the barbie" often evokes images of a fun social gathering under the sun. Australians, however, invariably use the word prawn rather than shrimp.
General Australian English is the most common of Australian accents. It is especially prominent in urban Australia and is used as a standard language for Australian films, television programs and advertising.
But the Australian accents are different from the accents of America, or Canada, or New Zealand because those accents were created from kids growing up in those places with different communities and histories. Accents are all about the people we spend time with when we are young.
The British Accent
The Great British accent proved to be the most difficult of all the accents to imitate – along with the regional Yorkshire and Cockney pronunciations, in particular.
(Noun) An uncouth or uncultured person, usually. See also: feral, ratbag, reptile, bevan etc. “I can't understand that bogan's broad Australian accent.”
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. At Voice Science™ we assist internationals to learn core features of the Australian accent by training the rules of Mainstream Australian pronunciation.
There are different variations of the Australian accent. Dr Gawne describes one variation as the "broad accent... [which is] your good, Aussie, ocker accents." Another variation is the "general accent, which is actually the majority of Australian English speakers."
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.
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.
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.