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.
The English language arrived in Australia a little more than 200 years ago and since that time it has been levelled, sculpted and adapted to give Australians a specific dialect.
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.
Early European settlers to Australia — many of whom were convicts — were from all over Great Britain and Ireland, and their speech patterns blended to form the new Australian accent.
They found that while Australian English is a more relaxed style of the English language, it can also make it hard for babies to learn new words. The Australian English sound system has 20 vowel sounds, many of which are very similar. The research showed that these vowel differences are not easy to learn.
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.
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 most similar to British English in spelling and sentence construction, although its accent and vocabulary are very distinct from the UK.
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.
What does it mean? Another word for friend. Common in Britain as well, but used even more enthusiastically by Aussies, who pepper the ends of their sentences with a longer, stretched out “maaaaate” that conveys friendliness and establishes a relaxed bond between the speakers.
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.
Australian English often contains higher levels of nasal resonance to oral resonance. Resonance refers to voice acoustics and is determined by where the bulk of sound vibration from the voice is reinforced in the your face.
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”.
(Noun) An uncouth or uncultured person, usually. See also: feral, ratbag, reptile, bevan etc. “I can't understand that bogan's broad Australian accent.”
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.
G'day (guh-day) / Hello.
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.
The speech of Aussie kids is becoming more and more American to fit in with friends who watch US television and films, a speech pathologist has revealed. Children are developing American accents, such as peppering 'like' and 'basically' in everyday speech, communication expert Lana McCarthy said.
Generally speaking though, it can be said that the Welsh accent is probably closest to an Australian one. This is due to their similarities in terms of pronunciation and vocabulary choices – both Welsh and Australians tend to end words on a 'v' sound rather than an 'r' sound like other English speakers do.
Strine, also spelled Stryne /ˈstraɪn/, describes a broad accent of Australian English.
As you probably already noticed, the pronunciation in the Australian accent seems to be a mix of British and American English, while Australian English is more similar to British 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 ...
The vast majority of Australians, then and now, tend to speak a version of general Australian English with only minor regional variations – not enough to amount to dialects, the regionally distinct forms complete with vocabularies of their own, as spoken in different parts of Britain and the United States.
Australians, colloquially known as Aussies, are the citizens, nationals and individuals associated with the country of Australia. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or ethno-cultural.