I was among the first generation of Aussie kids to watch Sesame Street when it first aired in Australia in 1971. In the years that followed, I was repeatedly accused of having an American accent.
As a South Aussie travelling in Montana in 2015, I was asked a couple of times why I sounded different to Steve Irwin. I would go a bit nasally, lift my pitch a little, and say "Crikey! It's a crocodile!" That kept them happy.
Not only do our accents differ depending on which state we live in, it depends on where our parents come from, our socio economic background and education.
Definitely. When I was late teens, early adult, lots of people asked if I was English. I had to explain, no, but my grandmother was & she taught my mother to speak & she taught me. (I didn’t tell them Grandma was a true Cockney!)
As a kid our whole family got labelled as Poms when we moved away from the northern beaches of Sydney, to western Sydney. Both my parents were brought up in North Sydney, their accent, which we inherited, was the ordinary accent north of the harbour in the first half of the 20th century.
@@judithstrachan9399 omg same I'm second generation Australian and my nan and gnan are from Liverpool and my family is very scouse and I'm also from SA and I'm constantly asked if I'm from England
Generations of Australian parents have looked on in consternation as their children learn words with American accents from TV, Bluey is our revenge lmao
As an Australian. I can't stand when my kids say words the US way. For instance, Diper instead of Nappy, Ass instead of Arse. I could go on. It just shits me to tears.
And cookies instead of biscuits. I suppose they call bread bakies, KFC fryies, chicken roasties, pasta boilies, whatever... so juvenile. Technically, all cooked food is a cookie.
Me too. With one exception…..I lived in the US for a year when I was 18 and I cannot break the habit of referring to tomato sauce as ketchup when in Maccas or HJs. I also have a thick midwestern twang when referring to my host family such as Mom. I had to put on an accent for them to understand me more easily. 30 years later and it still creeps in.
I used to work in a call centre, and I've spoken to probably a couple of hundred thousand people from all over Australia and had their location details. I definitely think that the different Aussie accents are more about how far you live from a major city centre than which state you live in. People in cities are far more likely to be exposed to a greater variation of accents which has what's called a flattening effect on the accent. Go out to country towns, and you find broader accents because less new people move to those areas. So, the locals keep hearing more or less the same accent. People in cities tend to talk a bit faster too because the pace of life is higher. The culture does generally become more casual too the further north you go as it gets significantly hotter, and people are more pragmatic. Language is fascinating stuff.
Somewhat agree but largely disagree. I also worked in a call centre. And was the only WA member of a big crew of Aussies that met on the other side of the world and was blown away and interested in it ever since how they sounded like movie characters. As you leave the cities the accent becomes broader but I’ve never agreed with the plain metropolitan/broad distinction. Broad from Queensland is not the same as broad from WA. And metropolitan in Queensland and NSW have qualities found in broad Queenslander but in neither metropolitan WA nor broad WA. People from SA and WA (Dubbuw U Way) probs notice it most. A Saffer sounds more natural in Perth than a Queenslander not because they sound more similar but because they don’t sound harsh or drawn out. When I hear pewl it’s not just the vowel shape. It’s full of effort. It’s the drawn out length. Some times it’s like a pěwl or pẽwl with the voice going up and down or like rising. And this really long L sound. The L on the end of an east coast word is probs more stressed than I’d say it at the start of the word. I don’t feel negatively about it but it sounds fake for lack of a nicer word. It sounds contrived, like a lot of effort. The vowel and the L each alone take probably longer than I’d say the whole word - and I’d say it with no inflection unless there was a reason to emphasise that word. And the Ts. Sydney - GenTLLL. Often in WA - gen’uw or maybe the T is just barely there. Sydney - ConTinenTLL. Perth - Con’in’en’uw or *maybe* con’inentuw. My Malbournian relos would say “sennT” but we’d say “sen’” like there’s a bit of a stop. Not to drag it out but I’d say most of WA (and somewhat SA) speaks less nasally, flatter toned or falling toned, faster, more breathy. Softer or completely unpronounced final and middle letters. Heavier- but not heavy on the first syllable and light on the second. Not a big distinction in stress between monophthongs and diphthongs. East coast is heavy on most syllables, more so on round ones. I feel Queenslanders more often speak from their head, Victorians more from their chest. I could go all day. But the point is even just hearing people from Sydney Melbourne or the Gold Coast hits me like a brick and as time goes on the differences are more pronounced in younger people and no less so in 2nd gen immigrants.
@@judithstrachan9399 Germany stems from the term the Romans put on the territory (Germania) meaning the place of the Germani. Nobody is even sure where the term came from, but almost every agrees that it didn't come from the people living there.
@@chriswatson7965 Yeah that's something I question too... Imagine if someone said "my name is Dave" and people just went "yeah we should call you Paul"
Yes!! My daughter started school with a British accent and it was especially hilarious, as her teacher was American… Halfway through the year she had an American accent!
I'm in South Australia, and I've had someone FROM London think I was also in London because of my accent. This was in an online game, so they had no context of where I am, and without even asking, like it was obvious, they were like "Thank god, another brit!" 😂 We are BY FAR the biggest accent outliers in the country, so getting snubbed from this video pretty much entirely is insulting.
Yeah I agree but at least WE aren't descended from convicts like the rest of the country. I have also been told over the phone that I sound English and asked how long I had been living here for. I also commented seperately about how we are more different form the rest of the country than they are to each other.
I always thought it was the southern states that pronounced "dance" as " darnce" (like aren't) and the northern states like "ant" Not sure if that explanation comes across
When my mum moved form South Australia in the 80's to NSW to teach, she was asked if she was from New Zealand. She did grow up in country South Australia before moving to Adelaide for Uni
Its like how I cannot tell the difference between American and Canadian accents, and Americans can't tell the difference between Australian and Kiwi accents
Exactly, I'm surprised there was no mention of ethnic parents influencing how our accent is evolving. Aussie/Italian and Aussie/Greek are brilliant all by themselves
To be honest, most Americans I’ve spoken to (often including Canadians) can’t tell the difference between Aussie, Kiwi, British and sometimes even Irish. We grow up listening to more foreign accents - most of our media is from overseas.
As an Australian, some times (and I mean some times) I can't hear the difference between Aussie, Kiwi and some English accents in non-Australian movies
As a Queenslander, my tone and clarity definitely varies quite considerably depending on who I'm talking to, and even my accent "floats" - if I spend significant time talking to international folks, my accent picks up their inflections easily. I've been accused of sounding American, Canadian, English, Irish, Scottish, New Zealander, and "where the fuck is your accent from?!" despite having spent only a couple of weeks each in the US and NZ, and the rest of my life in Australia. I grew up in a very multicultural low socio-economic area, so I heard a lot of different accents from an early age, and I think that's probably a factor. It's interesting the way things keep changing!
You sound like me. My most interesting encounter was not being able to convince 3 Canadian backpackers camping next to us that I was a local. They were absolutely convinced that I was american, but couldn't quite work out where I was from. I had just spent a year in South Korea where my co-workers were white, black, hispanic, asian and indigenous from around the USA/Canada with my two best friends I spent the most time with from the midwest and a New York hispanic respectively. My voice was a blend of all these.
Accents change all the time. English sounded nothing like today 200 years ago, and 400 years ago, 600, 800 or 1000 years ago it was completely different.
@@thevannmann Finally someone talking sense. My grandmother born in 1878 had a different Aussie accent from people today. I remember, for example, she pronounced "often" as "orften".
Yes there are. Knew someone when I lived in England he could pick accent even when they tried to cover their original accent, he drove a bus and had a young woman get on his bus and when she asked for a ticket he said you come from Queensland and she said no, he then said northern New South Wales. She looked at him strangely, because he was right.
The slang Changes as well. My cousin and his family are from WA and they'll use slang word's that I'd never heard, so I'd have ask what they meant. Same as I us slang they don't know, I'm a Queenslander 🙂
As mainland Australia is (pretty much) the same size as the lower 48 States in the U.S., there should be little surprise that there are different accents.
I find it interesting that america has such diverse accents, like your boston accent, your texan accent your colorado accent etc. We here in australia, essentially sound the same, but with slight variations.
With radio and television and widespread travel, accents tend to even out. Australia has had radio for nearly half its life, whereas the U.S. has only had it for perhaps a quarter of its life.
Don’t forget, though, that Australia is very sparsely populated other than the big coastal cities/regions. Whereas the USA and UK populations are concentrated across the entire countries, so the accents change constantly as you travel across the land (feels like literally every few miles in UK!).
It's actually Melbn. So it is to the people who live there, just as Launceston in Tasmania to the locals is Lonceston, and Launceston in England is Lonston to its locals.
No you're wrong, you can hear a major difference between a Adelaide local to a Melbourne local. The doco was right in Melbourne it's Malbun. In Sydney it Melbin. Put it this way... It you pronounce Albany and like Albury in W.A you'll get glasses LOL.
@@li04am That’s how the original Launceston is pronounced by the locals in England, and how it was initially pronounced by early European settlers to Tasmania, but over time, the pronunciation of the Tasmanian Launceston changed while the English Launceston stayed the same.
I am Western Australian but my mother's family came over from South Australia and she went back and lived there for a while too before I was born. She often pointed out I said certain words like a South Australian,.like pool ( "pul" instead of "pooo-wl") and school ( "skul" instead "skooo-wl"). Well, guess where I picked that up from Mum?! 😅
Curious they made no mention of the difference between Castlemaine and Newcastle. In Victoria you may come from “Casslemaine”, but in NSW they come from “Newcarsel”.
'Mob' is what us indigenous aussies use to refer to family or other groups of indigenous people. You should check out 'Move it Mob Style', it's an indigenous breakdance show that used to play on ABC. The mob that runs that show are absolute legends, used to love coming home from school and watching them. Pure Aussie nostalgia! 🤣🙌
I've travelled all over Australia and, yes, there are different accents, and even different words for the same thing. Interestingly, there is also a different accent that comes out of many who were educated in the big, expensive, universities, especially in Melbourne and Sydney.
Bad glasses might make you look stupid but bad grammar definitely does. That lady is correct when she corrected the reporter’s use of “You speak nice” because speak is a verb and requires an adverb, not an adjective! Americans have been using adjectives instead of adverbs for decades and it drives my educated English grammar crazy! I was the top of my class all through Primary School because of my excellent spelling and grammar, so when I hear bad grammar, it’s like nails on a chalkboard. Richard Dean Anderson (MacGyver, Stargate SG-1) is the same! His father was an English teacher and made sure all of his kids used correct spelling and grammar. Bad grammar grates on him as well! He even ad libbed it during a scene: ruclips.net/video/50OXJ5AT3ms/видео.htmlsi=usfnBInmV-Dfy-SW
@@terencemccarthy8615Yes, that’s another example. The one I notice who mostly uses adverbs properly is Emmy from EmmyMade channel. She went to good schools.
The Aboriginals call themselves mobs, just like the actual word for a group of kangaroos. It’s their word for tribes, because before white man came to Australia, the aboriginals had lived here for at least sixty thousand years, they were as mankind used to be in ancient history, families, groups of families or clans, dotted all over Australia, each with their own language, thousands of languages! But because their languages were verbal only, as the clans have died out, the languages disappeared. These days, they are trying, with the government’s help, to relearn the remaining languages by recording them, writing them down and teaching them in schools, in an effort to preserve as much as possible. Each region of aboriginals has their own accent because of their own language’s impact. So when you speak with them, they can refer to the Thursday Island mob, or the Northern Territory mob. It has no connection to gangsters or street gangs or the mafia etc., it’s purely Australian Aboriginal usage.
Except that "nice" can also be used as an adverb in a colloquial setting. E.g. "Tell the children to play nice!" Oftentimes, people who reckon they're educated aren't actually aware of the many exceptions to language as they would think.
@ This is still incorrect. It’s “Tell the children to play nicely. “Nicely” is the adverb that modifies the verb “to play”. It was a nice thought but you still need to play nicely.
Ryan I am a Indigenous Kimberley woman and would love to send you some videos of how we speak. I have been told that I talk to fast and they don’t understand what I’m saying until I slow it down and I am usually speaking English not my native language 😊😊
As someone who grew up in Warrnambool (VIC), before moving to Tasmania then NSW, can confirm the need to alter an accent to be understood between states
In what way did you need to alter your accent while in Tasmania? I’m from Tasmania and I didn’t think our accent was that different from most mainlander accents.
mob is used by everyone here, it comes from kangaroo being referred to as a mob, we'll ask "what are you mob up to" etc, Aboriginal lingo adopted it and is how we refer to tribes etc as a result
@@timjohnun4297 yes but outside of Oz, they use it in reference to the "angry" mob context mostly, so find it offensive, I have talked about Oz on a South African stream, that had international viewers once and they all spunout with the use, asking if it's not racist. just because a word is used elsewhere, doesn't mean the context or history of use is the same, the way that we use the word is unique to us in that sense, even being defined in some dictionaries as a separate definition of the word
@@siryogiwan Fair enough, but I highly doubt it is a word invented by indigenous Australians. There are over 250 different languages that were spoken by each tribe, before white settlement. My guess is, they picked it up from the English language
@@timjohnun4297 I didn't say it was invented, I said adopted, you miss read, all good, just a little confusion lol, apparently some groups in top end learned words from the Dutch way back, which they kept using, hundred of years later, even today, language is a truly interesting topic IMO
A great example is the guy from the Kimberley (WA) saying ‘tawk’ (talk) where as some of us say it more like ‘tork’ The funniest thing I’ve found though, is how many people think I’m English. Adelaide accents, even within Australia, are often mistaken for being a lot more English, and especially internationally when people haven’t heard SA accents before. Also, we can definitely tell when someone is Victorian vs SA or WA, because they tend to speak with a lot more of the American tones and twang. And don’t get me started on the Parmi vs Parma debate 🙄 P.S. please we only say it as Mel-bun or Mel-burn please don’t revert back to the old ways 😂
I sound different from people from the city and yes, I have sheard a different in sounds from Syndey to Melbourne accents. Even as an Indigenous person I've also found that my mob sound different from others, like say those of Bourke or Brewarrina mobs. And yes, I do change my language depending on who I'm talking too. I use my everyday lingo at home in the country and when I go to the city or somewhere all hobnob, I use clear and proper language, you know all p'n'p. btw! I just realised that I pronounce Melbourne as Melbin, Syndey as Sid-a-knee, Adelaide as Ada-layed, Perth comes out like Purrth, Darwin, sounds like I've taken out the 'i', Darhwn, Brisbane comes out, Brizbun and last but not least, poor old Hobart, Sound likes Hoebartt. Lol
I'm born and bred in Queensland, and the only way I could tell was, the use of certain words, ports verses school bags, sidewalk vs footpath, or duchess vs vanity etc. That is unless you're talking outback Australia. Completely different and probably what most people think of when they think of our accent. Ps. We love yanks doing an Aussie accent in movies. It's a hoot. 🤣🤣
A lot of the journalist voice is about being heard and understood by everyone. I do a lot of phone calls with my work and do the same thing- there's tonal and diction choices that make you easier to understand, especially with interference, bad lines etc. I was definitely taught to speak in a certain way by parents and grandparents and taught that how I spoke was part of how I presented myself to the world and would affect how I would be treated. I also grew up in a low SES rural area and can switch between the accents and diction taught by my parents and that I learned from my environment pretty easily. It's startled more than one person who only knows city me to hear country me come out suddenly.
Before British colonization, there were over 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages spoken in Australia, along with around 800 dialects. Peace out.
As an Aussie kid I lived in Western Samoa for about three years and learned to speak some of the language together with the accent. So now as a retired gentleman I'm occasionally called out for having a more refined accent - softer vowels, etc, - and while we all adjust somewhat to the context in which we speak, I've noticed to some degree I alter my grammar and take on the accent slightly of those in my circle of different nationalities. A colleague who did a PhD on an aspect of Indonesian music sounds just like a native Indonesian speaker speaking English when he's talking to an Indonesian. He is fluent in Bahasa Indonesia also. So I don't know if we're exceptions, but we're both musicians and highly tuned to sound. Immitating the accent seems to be a way of aligning with the linguistic tone palette of who we're speaking to.
Back in the mid 80s when I moved from Northern NSW (Australia) to live in Sydney, I got invited to a party where I was introduced to an American woman, and shortly after she asked what part of the states I was from... I was a little confused and said up north, meaning northern NSW. She replied, "oh, you're from California! I thought you sounded New Jersey..." That's when I felt totally confused and drank a dozen more wines. By that time no one could tell what planet I came from.
It makes sense that we don't have as many distinct accents as North America. We were mass settled mostly towards the latter 1800s when communications and movement technology got better. Also, America had a lot more time and settlements to diverge.
When I was in the hinterlands of QLD something about how I pronounced 'caramel' ice-cream made the guy serving me instantly ask if I was from Melbourne 😂
I'm from Newy ( Newcastle) er-ridge-ner-err-lee (originally) and we pren-oww-n-ss ( prenounce) Mel-ben ( Melbourne) like this! I'm in Tassie now, so I sometimes hear it the say-mmmmm, but it can be a little diff-rent.... yeah, more gentle maybe.. no is definately no-wer, but that bleeds into no-wayyy...without the er sound.
The big challenge is to write phonetically for an American to sound Australian. Strine that is. Or my favourite concreter, Us Trowel Ya. Thanks, Royun. Lets cetch up fer a beeyah sum toim. Mmm, it ain't easy.
@marklane58. Not even going to try phonetically 😮with En Zed. South African (incl. north of The Gap up to Kenya) nor, God help us, to Newfie (Newfoundland). Manx is gone, and Cornish also with a an 'rrrr' left only as a remnant. Welsh remains indecipherable and consequentially is butchered beyond belief and 'phoneticising'). Scots is nearly done for, surviving only on medicinal doses of porridge and haggis, whereas Canadian never recovered after the 1812 Treaty with USA (which war both sides thought they won). Moreover continuing French guerilla action in Canada has had a long lasting impact. Trying to help the Yankee 2nd cousins (some now 3 or 4 times removed) is really the limit. Moreover given they continue to aspire to enunciate every 'sharp' phoneticisation of every letter in a word, it seems doomed fail. (As in "kaa-lum," - also known as calm or "car-m".)
I was born in South Australia and moved to New South Wales @ 3 years old. Such a difference between NSW accents and South Australian accents … people thought my parents were English 😜
Originally from South Australia too, and went to the US a few years ago. Mostly American people thought I was from New Zealand. I also get South Africa sometimes.
I was in Adelaide 30 or 40 years ago (Melburnian then) and often thought they were English. And the Queensland woman who didn’t want to sound like a wanker, I say dance, not dahnce, but command and demand like commahnd. That was certainly how you distinguish Victorians and New South Welshmen..flat a versus long a, but that distinction seems to be lessening. I asked someone where Castlereagh St was, and she picked that I was a Vic.
It's hilarious hearing the host of the video talking in an Australian accent and saying "Bettah", like every Australian is saying "Beddah". He's actually talking in a weird accent no Australian talks in.
To add to other commentators, "mob" is now simply general Australian for "group of people". Example: "Do you mind if my mob comes over for Christmas dinner this year?", means "Do you mind if my family comes over for Christmas dinner?"
Not so much posh just more educated. The free settlers that originally came here were from the middle classes whereas the convicts were generally the lower classes or Irish.
It's not just you guys (though the frequency is much more in SA). I'm a Sydneysider and I do the same. The soft 'ahh' sound in words like dance, chance, plant, advantaged, granted etc.
I observed the same thing as you mentioned at the end. 😮 My job requires a consultation with my clients and I realise older people tend to stand right in front of me and the room is so small and after I back off trying to gain my personal space back, they come closer again and the wall’s right behind me so I can’t escape. 😂
First one was about how we pronounce the word “here” in different states. I’m Queenslander and so is my missus but her family from South Australia, they put the “ah” on the end of everything. As in, “No-ah”, why-yah! ❤️🇦🇺
I live in a rural town of 200k people. Outsiders saw we have an accent. Pity I moved here from 600km away, and have a completely different accent. But then you delve deeper. Different areas of the town have sometimes prominent differences in accent, especially when comparing bogan unemployed Westies and the new suburbs of metro migrants that have moved here. In that second bunch, you can actually tell from what part of the state capital they moved from. When I left my home state, working class upbringing, I had a very working bogan accent. But courtesy of my childhood, I developed the skill to change instantly to what the people around me sound like, so I don’t stand out. Blows the minds of people at times. Without thinking, I can talk with three other people, a suit wearing CEO, a college educated manager, and a bogan blue collar worker, and immediately sound the same as each one as I talk to them. Using the typical language level, pronunciation, inflection, and lack of or excessive use of profanity filler words. Initially it was a skill used for survival, but now is used to get my foot in the door when conversing with people well above my station. Yeah, we have accents, lots and lots of them. Zoom in, and you can even find differences in different ends of streets. Some accents can blend, and become a new inter area accent. But Woodstock guzzling unemployed bogan and the privately owned third generation doctors/lawyers/CEO’s over the street in the next suburb almost never mix their accents.
As a born-n-bred Australian, I’ve never really been able to tell the difference in accents! I can tell city v bush, upper class v working class, but never a difference between states. I know lots of people can tell so I certainly accept that it’s a thing, but I’ve never really been able to pick it myself. I was raised by a Qld dad and a NSW mum in Perth since I was 6 months old, so yours think I’d be better at picking yo the differences!
Warrnamboolian here, growing up there some forty years ago we pronounced it War/Na/Bool…often shorted to “Warny” or, less often and slightly tongue in cheek, “the Bool”. The only time we sounded it out was in formal occasions when we dignified the town by deploying all vowels and consonants. Oh, and bizarrely the good citizens of Warrnambool have their own special way of saying “Timor” …Tai/Mor not Tea/mor. For some reason there is a prominent street with that name and for 150 years we e pronounced it our own special way
I'm from Melbourne. While in Germany i was asked why i spoke with a British accent. Yet when i was talking with a fellow Australian girl, a person asked us where we were from because he thought it was English but couldn't understand us. I don't think other countries understand the different aussie accents.
Kiwi here, one of the ways I distingush an Aussie accent from a kiwi one is the "a" sound. Aussies flatten the a sound like the female name Tanya, kiwis usually pronounce the name as Tarnia or Tun-ya (spelt Tania). This might be considered more posh in Aussie but it probably is used more in NZ because of Polynesian/Maori languages which pronounce the "A" as "ar". If you listen to Taika and Chris Hemsworth in interviews you can hear the different "a" as Chris has a Queenslander accent and Taikia is from Aotearoa/NZ.
The whole thing about ‘sounding like a wanker’ is that we used to be told to aspire to a more British sound. Our newsreaders had a BBC tinged inflection and some, like the lady complaining about barbed wire, were, as you can see, quite snobby about how we talk. This all changed in the 1980s and news and tv presenters adopted a more normal Australian inflection. Differences across states are more about some pronunciation and about individual words that we use for things. For example, Melburnians wear ‘bathers’ to go swimming, Sydneysiders wear ‘cossies’…a shortened form of costume or swimming costume.I’m sure yr familiar with our habit of losing a second syllable and sticking an o or and I sound on the end. Cossies is just another one of these. In Sydney and Melbourne some speech differences are as old as settlement, as Sydney was poorer, bigger and more convict heavy, whereas Melbourne grew as a gold rush city, richer and slightly more cultured, arguable more ‘English’. Much has changed in the last 40 years as we have shrugged off the last vestiges of habit that were a part of being a British colony. Thank heavens,we are more just ourselves now, and better for it.
I have lived in 5 different states in Aus. Yes their is a very slight difference in accents, but sometimes it is difficult to distinguish.Prob the same in the USA . Love your easy to understand accent Ryan..
Apart from our native population of course, we were mainly a british colony up until the nineteen fifties. Think about it. We started with a mix of english, irish, scots and welsh along with all their regional dialects. And as people spread out around the country, the various mixes there probably contributed to the dialects. Having said all that I think we have a strong irish influence on our language. In the 1950s the government started bringing in immigrants from italy, greece and malta, followed by waves of people from vietnam and korea etc. More recently they are from the middle east. That probably briefly affects regional areas before they revert back. The 1850s goldrushes brought lots of mixes of nationalities to the state of Victoria. In South Australia they had large influxes of Cornish people to the mines and lots of Germans who took up grapegrowing. All these sorts of things influenced our dialects. I took a ride with a Russian Taxi driver a few years ago. He said he'd been around the world and the Aussies were the worst english speakers of the lot. He said it took him six months before he could understand his passengers. But in Las Vegas a woman said she could sit and listen to us all day. Go figure .... But I wonder how the extensive exposure to media that we have now, will change things ...
I listen to the Australian accent as an Aussie and get so confused, my grandparents sound like that, but mine sounds real weird, I talk really fast so it’s hard to tell, but I sound like gardening australia guy, can’t remember what his name is dammit
As far as I know, the main accent variations (other than broad, general and cultivated) is the SA accent and how they pronounce “A” and the Melbourne AL/EL pronunciation.
I think most of us lose the "r" in words (and Americans don't), so Melbourne doesn't sound like (American) Mel-borrn - drawn out second syllable - but (Aussie) Mel-bin - short second syllable.
I think there are more than three accents (broad, general, and educated). In addition to these, children of immigrants from the Mediterranean area (Greece, Italy, Lebanon) have a very Australian accent but with a slight difference to Anglo Australians (look up Adam Hills' video on ordering pizza in Australia). Aboriginal Australians from the rural and remote areas may have English as a second language and have a distinct way of talking.
I'm in Melbourne and back in the 1970s & 80s could accurately pick if a young person was from Reservoir, Thomastown or Lalor (Melbourne's North). A lot were the children of mediterranean immigrants and had distinct Aussie accents.
You mentioned your son saying "Naur" and that goat gliding vowel, turning a regular vowel into a dipthong, is an example of a localised accent. It is particularly seen in younger generations in eastern Sydney (Bluey is set in Queensland, and I'm not an expert in their casting to be fair). You would very rarely hear that where I'm from (in Perth) unless it was a linking r was involved (preceding word stating with a vowel "no, I'm not"). Most Americans would experience a more homogenised view of Australian accents due to media consumption (how many times would an American hear a wangkatha accent for example)
My son sounds like an American Australian because he loved blippi haha And “mob” usually refers to aboriginal (Australian native) groups in particular areas. Kind of like different Native American clans I guess. There are sooo many aboriginal languages! It’s impressive actually.
Mob refers to tribes of indigenous people from different states or even different regions of one state. Mob is generally used by Aborigines in reference to family, extended family or members of your tribe or community.
Some people from other countries, e.g., the US, can't tell the difference between Aussie, Kiwi and some English accents, because all those accents are different to theirs. I can't tell the difference between some norther US accents and Canadian, which pisses off my Canadian relatives. Australian and Kiwi accents are apparently both a mixture of English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh accents, just in different proportions. Despite that, Australian and Kiwi accents all sound jarringly different to each other and we (Aus and NZ) can all pick the difference immediately. I'm from Qld and worked in South Australia for a while and when I first landed in Adelaide, I thought I'd landed in Auckland. The Adelaide accent is closer to Kiwi or English in a lot ways and the Brisbane accent is closer to the US in some ways. There are also very different accents (and pacing) between metropolitan and country accents and between private school/University-educated speakers and working-class speakers. Aside from the accent, there can also be dramatically different slang terms used in different regions. Again, when I first arrived in Adelaide from Brisbane in the late 90s, I often got lost in conversations because of some of the terminology they used (and they did sound like wankers). I copped a lot of shit too, especially for the way I say pool, school, tool, etc. (poo-wul, skoo-wul, too-wul), which was made worse because my Dad was from Liverpool and I originally copied his accent as a kid, so everyone thought I was Irish. When I first went to the US for a couple of month-long trip, I was determined not to pick up a US twang or drawl, like so many Aussie's do, so I made myself speak more 'ocka' (exaggerated Australian accent), which stuck, and now I talk with a flat, nasal tone like a brickie's labourer from Logan, despite having once been a University lecturer with a 'lecturer' voice like an opera singer from Buckingham. I definitely change my accent (and how much I swear) along a spectrum depending on who I'm talking to. I've also noticed that younger Australians speak with a more US-style accent now and use more US slang, because our media is more saturated with US shows, some companies just use their US TV commercials here, and the internet is saturated with US content. When I was growing up, there was more UK content than US content, so our accent was more similar to English accents and there was more status associated with sounding English rather than American. Now, all the 'kids' want to sound American and there are all these US customs like Halloween and Proms becoming more popular, when they were just cultural curiosities before, that never actually happened here. It seems sad to me that we are losing our 'uniqueness' and becoming more like the generic US.
I know it's been mentioned a couple of times in the comments (though not by the ABC report of course) but the biggest accent divide is between city & country dwellers (certainly here in Victoria anyway). That is far less subtle than the nuance level stuff covered in the ABC report, and it's not just the accent, even more noticable is the different pace of speech: slower in the country and faster in the city
I absolutely love that Bluey is making kids in other countries sound like an Aussie. But it's even better when the watching parents start using our Aussie terms in their everyday life 😂 When I was playing online games, us Aussies had so much fun teaching everyone our slang words. It was even better hearing the stories from our American gaming friends. One of them had a big night on the town and basically told his mates that he was 'knackered' and going home. With 'knackered' being our Aussie slang for 'really tired'..😂 Needless to say, his mates did a double take 😁 As for the term 'Nahhh', basically that's your 2yo saying 'No'. Now, if they said 'Nahhh.. Yeah', that means 'Yes' And if they said 'Yeah..Nahh' that still means 'No' Just visit down under and you'll catch on soon enough 😊
Mob is how indigenous Australians refer to their own groups. Not tribe, you would never say tribe. Using the term mob when referring to different groups is a sign of respect. There are over 500 nations of indigenous Australians
Absolutely no Australians, regardless of where they are from, pronounce Melbourne the way Americans do.
That's because there are towns in the US called Melbourne, and that's their only point of reference.
True
Americans mostly pronounce it as Mel-born. Imo it's more like Mel-burn with less emphases on the r
That's how I say it as a south Aussie at least @@thewave4475
@LesleyBeswick there is always a Sydney that is like a few hours drive from that Melbourne as well! Lol
Your son picking up Bluey is like our 80s kids learning Americanisms from Sesame Street
How the turn tables
Mrs Bond!@@shashe23
😂 yes.
Im goin to the dunny
I was among the first generation of Aussie kids to watch Sesame Street when it first aired in Australia in 1971. In the years that followed, I was repeatedly accused of having an American accent.
“Mob” is the term that indigenous Australians use to describe their clan.
Also to describe a large number of Kangaroos.
Correct! Thank you for giving Mr Was that information 😊👍
@@wayupnorth8367Also Correct thank you for providing that info 😊👍
Mob can also just mean saying a group of people too.
Or a bunch of sheep.
The funnest accent in Australia is the Italian Greek Lebanese take on English. "Fully sick mate".
omogodd! It took 2 generations for their accent to be added to ours, evolution is great
You crazy Malaka Dino
@@michaelgrantham125 “Imma gunna go full sic on youz bro” while jumping around kangaroo style in a McDonald’s car park
As a South Aussie travelling in Montana in 2015, I was asked a couple of times why I sounded different to Steve Irwin.
I would go a bit nasally, lift my pitch a little, and say "Crikey! It's a crocodile!"
That kept them happy.
Not only do our accents differ depending on which state we live in, it depends on where our parents come from, our socio economic background and education.
Definitely.
When I was late teens, early adult, lots of people asked if I was English. I had to explain, no, but my grandmother was & she taught my mother to speak & she taught me. (I didn’t tell them Grandma was a true Cockney!)
As a kid our whole family got labelled as Poms when we moved away from the northern beaches of Sydney, to western Sydney.
Both my parents were brought up in North Sydney, their accent, which we inherited, was the ordinary accent north of the harbour in the first half of the 20th century.
@@judithstrachan9399 omg same I'm second generation Australian and my nan and gnan are from Liverpool and my family is very scouse and I'm also from SA and I'm constantly asked if I'm from England
And differ within a family
@@judithstrachan9399her name wasn’t Eliza Doolittle by any chance?
Generations of Australian parents have looked on in consternation as their children learn words with American accents from TV, Bluey is our revenge lmao
As an Australian. I can't stand when my kids say words the US way. For instance, Diper instead of Nappy, Ass instead of Arse. I could go on. It just shits me to tears.
Same, im just happy my kid doesn't say tomato, in the US accent lol. I haven't been able to revert the word progress from US to aussie though!
And cookies instead of biscuits.
I suppose they call bread bakies, KFC fryies, chicken roasties, pasta boilies, whatever... so juvenile.
Technically, all cooked food is a cookie.
And calling their Mum, "MOM"
OFF-fence instead of attack! (footy especially).
Deee-fence for defence!
Me too. With one exception…..I lived in the US for a year when I was 18 and I cannot break the habit of referring to tomato sauce as ketchup when in Maccas or HJs. I also have a thick midwestern twang when referring to my host family such as Mom. I had to put on an accent for them to understand me more easily. 30 years later and it still creeps in.
No Australian ever calls Melbourne, MELBORN.
Melbin
Agreed. It’s “Mel-bun” or “Mel-burn” but never “Mel-born”.
Exactly!
Mel-Burn for sure
@@whocanmakeyourwholeweek7272yes, it’s Melbin.
The lady talking about Qld'ers summed us up in one short sweet sentence,"Cause we don't want to sound like wankers"😂😂😂
Trouble is, as a South Aussie, I think that pronunciation makes 'em sound like wankers😂.
Ahahaha so true!
is ,😅😅😅
I died. She's so right. 😂
I think I emphasise my coastal middle class accent when I’m hanging with my Canberra mates. Don’t want to be confused as a dirty yogi.
There are four accents: City, country, Aboriginal and sports commentator
Don't forget Greek/Italian inflection
Lebo
There are way more than just 4.
And jockey 🏇
And slightly regal
There is Posh Australian, Generic Australian, Bogan/Broad/Country Australian, Ethnic Australian and heaps more!
there are the real accents. there are all these regional variations ofc but they dont make as much difference
I used to work in a call centre, and I've spoken to probably a couple of hundred thousand people from all over Australia and had their location details. I definitely think that the different Aussie accents are more about how far you live from a major city centre than which state you live in. People in cities are far more likely to be exposed to a greater variation of accents which has what's called a flattening effect on the accent. Go out to country towns, and you find broader accents because less new people move to those areas. So, the locals keep hearing more or less the same accent. People in cities tend to talk a bit faster too because the pace of life is higher. The culture does generally become more casual too the further north you go as it gets significantly hotter, and people are more pragmatic. Language is fascinating stuff.
Somewhat agree but largely disagree. I also worked in a call centre. And was the only WA member of a big crew of Aussies that met on the other side of the world and was blown away and interested in it ever since how they sounded like movie characters. As you leave the cities the accent becomes broader but I’ve never agreed with the plain metropolitan/broad distinction. Broad from Queensland is not the same as broad from WA. And metropolitan in Queensland and NSW have qualities found in broad Queenslander but in neither metropolitan WA nor broad WA.
People from SA and WA (Dubbuw U Way) probs notice it most. A Saffer sounds more natural in Perth than a Queenslander not because they sound more similar but because they don’t sound harsh or drawn out. When I hear pewl it’s not just the vowel shape. It’s full of effort. It’s the drawn out length. Some times it’s like a pěwl or pẽwl with the voice going up and down or like rising. And this really long L sound. The L on the end of an east coast word is probs more stressed than I’d say it at the start of the word. I don’t feel negatively about it but it sounds fake for lack of a nicer word. It sounds contrived, like a lot of effort. The vowel and the L each alone take probably longer than I’d say the whole word - and I’d say it with no inflection unless there was a reason to emphasise that word. And the Ts.
Sydney - GenTLLL. Often in WA - gen’uw or maybe the T is just barely there. Sydney - ConTinenTLL. Perth - Con’in’en’uw or *maybe* con’inentuw. My Malbournian relos would say “sennT” but we’d say “sen’” like there’s a bit of a stop.
Not to drag it out but I’d say most of WA (and somewhat SA) speaks less nasally, flatter toned or falling toned, faster, more breathy. Softer or completely unpronounced final and middle letters. Heavier- but not heavy on the first syllable and light on the second. Not a big distinction in stress between monophthongs and diphthongs. East coast is heavy on most syllables, more so on round ones. I feel Queenslanders more often speak from their head, Victorians more from their chest.
I could go all day. But the point is even just hearing people from Sydney Melbourne or the Gold Coast hits me like a brick and as time goes on the differences are more pronounced in younger people and no less so in 2nd gen immigrants.
I'm a firm believer of who lives there, gets to decide how it's pronounced.
Then why is it Germany instead of Deutschland?
@@chriswatson7965, true, I agree. But that’s a whole different language, not just an accent.
@@judithstrachan9399 Germany stems from the term the Romans put on the territory (Germania) meaning the place of the Germani. Nobody is even sure where the term came from, but almost every agrees that it didn't come from the people living there.
So when there is a mix?
@@chriswatson7965 Yeah that's something I question too... Imagine if someone said "my name is Dave" and people just went "yeah we should call you Paul"
On the 'Bluey' subject, there was a lot of Aussie kids around last decade with British accents courtesy of Peppa Pig. ☮️
Yep, that was my nieces!
Yes!! My daughter started school with a British accent and it was especially hilarious, as her teacher was American… Halfway through the year she had an American accent!
I'm in South Australia, and I've had someone FROM London think I was also in London because of my accent. This was in an online game, so they had no context of where I am, and without even asking, like it was obvious, they were like "Thank god, another brit!" 😂
We are BY FAR the biggest accent outliers in the country, so getting snubbed from this video pretty much entirely is insulting.
Yeah I agree but at least WE aren't descended from convicts like the rest of the country. I have also been told over the phone that I sound English and asked how long I had been living here for. I also commented seperately about how we are more different form the rest of the country than they are to each other.
I always thought it was the southern states that pronounced "dance" as " darnce" (like aren't) and the northern states like "ant"
Not sure if that explanation comes across
I'm a cockney . I live In Tassie. Get asked regularly if I'm from SA!
When my mum moved form South Australia in the 80's to NSW to teach, she was asked if she was from New Zealand. She did grow up in country South Australia before moving to Adelaide for Uni
Also SA I had a tradie from London ask me how long I'd been in Australia assuming I was also from the UK.
Its like how I cannot tell the difference between American and Canadian accents, and Americans can't tell the difference between Australian and Kiwi accents
Or Australian and South African.
Australian Aboriginal people of different areas call themselves as a Mob, being the People of their Community are called the Mob
I would bet money that was after white settlement, not before....
Tasmanians have an advantage, if they get it wrong, you can just ask the other head.😅
Yep: they're the only Aussies with five brown eyes, too....
😂
Friggin gold👍🍻
Now don't be jealous of Tasmanians
😅😅😅
As an Aussie that grew up around my Italian accented grandparents, sometimes my Aussie accent sounds like a blend of everything honestly.
Which is pretty much how we speak :). Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between some Yorkshire accented words & Aussie accented words.
@lauriedmills7581 thanks for the validation :) 💞
Exactly, I'm surprised there was no mention of ethnic parents influencing how our accent is evolving. Aussie/Italian and Aussie/Greek are brilliant all by themselves
To be honest, most Americans I’ve spoken to (often including Canadians) can’t tell the difference between Aussie, Kiwi, British and sometimes even Irish. We grow up listening to more foreign accents - most of our media is from overseas.
As an Australian, some times (and I mean some times) I can't hear the difference between Aussie, Kiwi and some English accents in non-Australian movies
As a Queenslander, my tone and clarity definitely varies quite considerably depending on who I'm talking to, and even my accent "floats" - if I spend significant time talking to international folks, my accent picks up their inflections easily. I've been accused of sounding American, Canadian, English, Irish, Scottish, New Zealander, and "where the fuck is your accent from?!" despite having spent only a couple of weeks each in the US and NZ, and the rest of my life in Australia. I grew up in a very multicultural low socio-economic area, so I heard a lot of different accents from an early age, and I think that's probably a factor. It's interesting the way things keep changing!
You sound like me. My most interesting encounter was not being able to convince 3 Canadian backpackers camping next to us that I was a local. They were absolutely convinced that I was american, but couldn't quite work out where I was from. I had just spent a year in South Korea where my co-workers were white, black, hispanic, asian and indigenous from around the USA/Canada with my two best friends I spent the most time with from the midwest and a New York hispanic respectively. My voice was a blend of all these.
It's important we don't lose our accents. So many little kids sound more American thanks to cocomelon etc.
Accents change all the time. English sounded nothing like today 200 years ago, and 400 years ago, 600, 800 or 1000 years ago it was completely different.
@@thevannmann Finally someone talking sense. My grandmother born in 1878 had a different Aussie accent from people today. I remember, for example, she pronounced "often" as "orften".
Yes there are. Knew someone when I lived in England he could pick accent even when they tried to cover their original accent, he drove a bus and had a young woman get on his bus and when she asked for a ticket he said you come from Queensland and she said no, he then said northern New South Wales. She looked at him strangely, because he was right.
“I suck at accents; I couldn’t even do one” - that’s unfair, you can do your own perfectly!
The slang Changes as well. My cousin and his family are from WA and they'll use slang word's that I'd never heard, so I'd have ask what they meant. Same as I us slang they don't know, I'm a Queenslander 🙂
Im from wa, give us an example👍🍻
Qlder who mover to WA. Differences i had to change.
Nikko= permanent marker
Togs= bathers
Popper= juice box
As mainland Australia is (pretty much) the same size as the lower 48 States in the U.S., there should be little surprise that there are different accents.
The surprise is that the differences are so slight. Still, give us another 100 years.
Then again, we’re also the most mobile population on earth, so I think that helps to,homogenise the accent.
I find it interesting that america has such diverse accents, like your boston accent, your texan accent your colorado accent etc. We here in australia, essentially sound the same, but with slight variations.
With radio and television and widespread travel, accents tend to even out. Australia has had radio for nearly half its life, whereas the U.S. has only had it for perhaps a quarter of its life.
Don’t forget, though, that Australia is very sparsely populated other than the big coastal cities/regions. Whereas the USA and UK populations are concentrated across the entire countries, so the accents change constantly as you travel across the land (feels like literally every few miles in UK!).
3:08. No, please don't. As a Melbournian I am happy to accept Mel-BURN, but *never* Mel-BORN.
It's actually Melbn. So it is to the people who live there, just as Launceston in Tasmania to the locals is Lonceston, and Launceston in England is Lonston to its locals.
Actually it's Loncestn here in Tassie. Or just Lonnie..
No you're wrong, you can hear a major difference between a Adelaide local to a Melbourne local. The doco was right in Melbourne it's Malbun. In Sydney it Melbin. Put it this way... It you pronounce Albany and like Albury in W.A you'll get glasses LOL.
@@CassTazI thought it was lorncestun
@@li04am That’s how the original Launceston is pronounced by the locals in England, and how it was initially pronounced by early European settlers to Tasmania, but over time, the pronunciation of the Tasmanian Launceston changed while the English Launceston stayed the same.
As a South Australia, I can tell you that our accent is quite different from the other states, or that's what I've been told
Impacts all the big isolated states/territories (WA and NT). Eastern seaboard is often more intermixed.
I am Western Australian but my mother's family came over from South Australia and she went back and lived there for a while too before I was born. She often pointed out I said certain words like a South Australian,.like pool ( "pul" instead of "pooo-wl") and school ( "skul" instead "skooo-wl"). Well, guess where I picked that up from Mum?! 😅
Biggest thing I notice are words like plant and dance with SA people
@@li04amyeah same, chance, dance etc
Curious they made no mention of the difference between Castlemaine and Newcastle. In Victoria you may come from “Casslemaine”, but in NSW they come from “Newcarsel”.
'Mob' is what us indigenous aussies use to refer to family or other groups of indigenous people. You should check out 'Move it Mob Style', it's an indigenous breakdance show that used to play on ABC. The mob that runs that show are absolute legends, used to love coming home from school and watching them. Pure Aussie nostalgia! 🤣🙌
I've travelled all over Australia and, yes, there are different accents, and even different words for the same thing. Interestingly, there is also a different accent that comes out of many who were educated in the big, expensive, universities, especially in Melbourne and Sydney.
It's funny watching some Australian plays, movies or tv where rural characters have the NIDA accent
I love how Bluey is getting American children to speak with Aussie accents 😂
Bad glasses might make you look stupid but bad grammar definitely does. That lady is correct when she corrected the reporter’s use of “You speak nice” because speak is a verb and requires an adverb, not an adjective! Americans have been using adjectives instead of adverbs for decades and it drives my educated English grammar crazy! I was the top of my class all through Primary School because of my excellent spelling and grammar, so when I hear bad grammar, it’s like nails on a chalkboard. Richard Dean Anderson (MacGyver, Stargate SG-1) is the same! His father was an English teacher and made sure all of his kids used correct spelling and grammar. Bad grammar grates on him as well! He even ad libbed it during a scene: ruclips.net/video/50OXJ5AT3ms/видео.htmlsi=usfnBInmV-Dfy-SW
You did good😡
@@terencemccarthy8615Yes, that’s another example. The one I notice who mostly uses adverbs properly is Emmy from EmmyMade channel. She went to good schools.
The Aboriginals call themselves mobs, just like the actual word for a group of kangaroos. It’s their word for tribes, because before white man came to Australia, the aboriginals had lived here for at least sixty thousand years, they were as mankind used to be in ancient history, families, groups of families or clans, dotted all over Australia, each with their own language, thousands of languages! But because their languages were verbal only, as the clans have died out, the languages disappeared. These days, they are trying, with the government’s help, to relearn the remaining languages by recording them, writing them down and teaching them in schools, in an effort to preserve as much as possible. Each region of aboriginals has their own accent because of their own language’s impact. So when you speak with them, they can refer to the Thursday Island mob, or the Northern Territory mob. It has no connection to gangsters or street gangs or the mafia etc., it’s purely Australian Aboriginal usage.
Except that "nice" can also be used as an adverb in a colloquial setting. E.g. "Tell the children to play nice!" Oftentimes, people who reckon they're educated aren't actually aware of the many exceptions to language as they would think.
@ This is still incorrect. It’s “Tell the children to play nicely. “Nicely” is the adverb that modifies the verb “to play”. It was a nice thought but you still need to play nicely.
Ryan I am a Indigenous Kimberley woman and would love to send you some videos of how we speak. I have been told that I talk to fast and they don’t understand what I’m saying until I slow it down and I am usually speaking English not my native language 😊😊
As someone who grew up in Warrnambool (VIC), before moving to Tasmania then NSW, can confirm the need to alter an accent to be understood between states
@@MalteseSparrow 😂😂😂
In what way did you need to alter your accent while in Tasmania? I’m from Tasmania and I didn’t think our accent was that different from most mainlander accents.
@@SanctusPaulus1962 He/she is joking! 😂😂😂
It was once believed that South Australians had the poshest accent, not sure about now. I think we are much more homogenised now.
it is still way more cultured than the colonies always will be
I can always tell a South Australian by the accent and even pronunciation (Baink instead of bank, for example)
@@timjohnun4297 I don't know, I'm a South Australian and I say bank.
@@shaunjaensch6899 South Australia was also a colony, mate. It just wasn’t a penal colony.
mob is used by everyone here, it comes from kangaroo being referred to as a mob, we'll ask "what are you mob up to" etc, Aboriginal lingo adopted it and is how we refer to tribes etc as a result
Mob is universal - "An angry mob gathered outside the White house", for example. From Latin: Mobile vulgus - excitable crowd.
@@timjohnun4297 yes but outside of Oz, they use it in reference to the "angry" mob context mostly, so find it offensive, I have talked about Oz on a South African stream, that had international viewers once and they all spunout with the use, asking if it's not racist. just because a word is used elsewhere, doesn't mean the context or history of use is the same, the way that we use the word is unique to us in that sense, even being defined in some dictionaries as a separate definition of the word
@@siryogiwan Fair enough, but I highly doubt it is a word invented by indigenous Australians. There are over 250 different languages that were spoken by each tribe, before white settlement. My guess is, they picked it up from the English language
@@timjohnun4297 I didn't say it was invented, I said adopted, you miss read, all good, just a little confusion lol, apparently some groups in top end learned words from the Dutch way back, which they kept using, hundred of years later, even today, language is a truly interesting topic IMO
A great example is the guy from the Kimberley (WA) saying ‘tawk’ (talk) where as some of us say it more like ‘tork’
The funniest thing I’ve found though, is how many people think I’m English. Adelaide accents, even within Australia, are often mistaken for being a lot more English, and especially internationally when people haven’t heard SA accents before.
Also, we can definitely tell when someone is Victorian vs SA or WA, because they tend to speak with a lot more of the American tones and twang. And don’t get me started on the Parmi vs Parma debate 🙄
P.S. please we only say it as Mel-bun or Mel-burn please don’t revert back to the old ways 😂
I sound different from people from the city and yes, I have sheard a different in sounds from Syndey to Melbourne accents. Even as an Indigenous person I've also found that my mob sound different from others, like say those of Bourke or Brewarrina mobs. And yes, I do change my language depending on who I'm talking too. I use my everyday lingo at home in the country and when I go to the city or somewhere all hobnob, I use clear and proper language, you know all p'n'p.
btw! I just realised that I pronounce Melbourne as Melbin, Syndey as Sid-a-knee, Adelaide as Ada-layed, Perth comes out like Purrth, Darwin, sounds like I've taken out the 'i', Darhwn, Brisbane comes out, Brizbun and last but not least, poor old Hobart, Sound likes Hoebartt. Lol
I'm born and bred in Queensland, and the only way I could tell was, the use of certain words, ports verses school bags, sidewalk vs footpath, or duchess vs vanity etc. That is unless you're talking outback Australia. Completely different and probably what most people think of when they think of our accent.
Ps. We love yanks doing an Aussie accent in movies. It's a hoot. 🤣🤣
A lot of the journalist voice is about being heard and understood by everyone. I do a lot of phone calls with my work and do the same thing- there's tonal and diction choices that make you easier to understand, especially with interference, bad lines etc.
I was definitely taught to speak in a certain way by parents and grandparents and taught that how I spoke was part of how I presented myself to the world and would affect how I would be treated.
I also grew up in a low SES rural area and can switch between the accents and diction taught by my parents and that I learned from my environment pretty easily. It's startled more than one person who only knows city me to hear country me come out suddenly.
Before British colonization, there were over 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages spoken in Australia, along with around 800 dialects. Peace out.
As an Aussie kid I lived in Western Samoa for about three years and learned to speak some of the language together with the accent. So now as a retired gentleman I'm occasionally called out for having a more refined accent - softer vowels, etc, - and while we all adjust somewhat to the context in which we speak, I've noticed to some degree I alter my grammar and take on the accent slightly of those in my circle of different nationalities. A colleague who did a PhD on an aspect of Indonesian music sounds just like a native Indonesian speaker speaking English when he's talking to an Indonesian. He is fluent in Bahasa Indonesia also. So I don't know if we're exceptions, but we're both musicians and highly tuned to sound. Immitating the accent seems to be a way of aligning with the linguistic tone palette of who we're speaking to.
Back in the mid 80s when I moved from Northern NSW (Australia) to live in Sydney, I got invited to a party where I was introduced to an American woman, and shortly after she asked what part of the states I was from... I was a little confused and said up north, meaning northern NSW. She replied, "oh, you're from California! I thought you sounded New Jersey..." That's when I felt totally confused and drank a dozen more wines. By that time no one could tell what planet I came from.
OMG you cracked me up when you said 'what they call them mobs like the mafia' LOL
We don't say naur!!!!!
Yes we have different accents…. We’re the same bloody size as the US. It’s amazing we don’t have more
It makes sense that we don't have as many distinct accents as North America. We were mass settled mostly towards the latter 1800s when communications and movement technology got better. Also, America had a lot more time and settlements to diverge.
With so many flies there is good reason people in rural areas talk through their teeth. 🪰🪰🪰
We yak through our noses for good reason
Americas national bird.. Bald Eagle.
Australias National Bird..🪰
😂😂@@baabaabaa-El😂😂
LOL, thanks for the chuckle!
@@baabaabaa-Eland the Australian wedge tail eagle is much much bigger than the Murican bald eagle
When I was in the hinterlands of QLD something about how I pronounced 'caramel' ice-cream made the guy serving me instantly ask if I was from Melbourne 😂
I'm from Newy ( Newcastle) er-ridge-ner-err-lee (originally) and we pren-oww-n-ss ( prenounce) Mel-ben ( Melbourne) like this! I'm in Tassie now, so I sometimes hear it the say-mmmmm, but it can be a little diff-rent.... yeah, more gentle maybe.. no is definately no-wer, but that bleeds into no-wayyy...without the er sound.
The big challenge is to write phonetically for an American to sound Australian. Strine that is. Or my favourite concreter, Us Trowel Ya. Thanks, Royun. Lets cetch up fer a beeyah sum toim. Mmm, it ain't easy.
LOL you did bloody good! 🙂
Ok took me a second!
@@DanDownunda8888 Thenks, mite.
@@dcmastermindfirst9418 Cancelling the 'r' s is the hard part. Can't figure that out yet. Carnt figer that out... nup... working on it.
@marklane58. Not even going to try phonetically 😮with En Zed. South African (incl. north of The Gap up to Kenya) nor, God help us, to Newfie (Newfoundland). Manx is gone, and Cornish also with a an 'rrrr' left only as a remnant. Welsh remains indecipherable and consequentially is butchered beyond belief and 'phoneticising'). Scots is nearly done for, surviving only on medicinal doses of porridge and haggis, whereas Canadian never recovered after the 1812 Treaty with USA (which war both sides thought they won). Moreover continuing French guerilla action in Canada has had a long lasting impact.
Trying to help the Yankee 2nd cousins (some now 3 or 4 times removed) is really the limit. Moreover given they continue to aspire to enunciate every 'sharp' phoneticisation of every letter in a word, it seems doomed fail. (As in "kaa-lum," - also known as calm or "car-m".)
I was born in South Australia and moved to New South Wales @ 3 years old. Such a difference between NSW accents and South Australian accents … people thought my parents were English 😜
Same for me when I moved to Melbourne, but my parents are Italian! 😂
Originally from South Australia too, and went to the US a few years ago. Mostly American people thought I was from New Zealand. I also get South Africa sometimes.
I was in Adelaide 30 or 40 years ago (Melburnian then) and often thought they were English.
And the Queensland woman who didn’t want to sound like a wanker, I say dance, not dahnce, but command and demand like commahnd. That was certainly how you distinguish Victorians and New South Welshmen..flat a versus long a, but that distinction seems to be lessening. I asked someone where Castlereagh St was, and she picked that I was a Vic.
South Aussies sound more South African to me.
@@shanegates678 That's because SA is lekker.
As a Queenslander, Victorians can be wrong about how their capital is pronounced.
That's offensive haghhahgagga
as a New South Welshman, Victorians are seldom right about anything lol
@@Smokey7186 lol
😂 nah, we say it correctly. Lol
I am here to back this comment as it is 100% accurate
It's hilarious hearing the host of the video talking in an Australian accent and saying "Bettah", like every Australian is saying "Beddah". He's actually talking in a weird accent no Australian talks in.
He's a radio presenter, right? I do the same thing when I try to speak clearly.
He’s not putting on any accent when he’s saying “better”. All he’s doing is properly annunciating the word. There’s two t’s in "better", not two d’s.
I'm fairly sure that's just how a lot of West Aussies speak :(
Source; me, a West Aussie
To add to other commentators, "mob" is now simply general Australian for "group of people". Example: "Do you mind if my mob comes over for Christmas dinner this year?", means "Do you mind if my family comes over for Christmas dinner?"
Sth Australians say darnce and charnce rather than dance and chance. Sth Australia had no convicts, it was posh.
Came to say this. Newcastle: newCASSel and newCARSSel
Not so much posh just more educated. The free settlers that originally came here were from the middle classes whereas the convicts were generally the lower classes or Irish.
It's not just you guys (though the frequency is much more in SA). I'm a Sydneysider and I do the same. The soft 'ahh' sound in words like dance, chance, plant, advantaged, granted etc.
You guys also say "yallow" instead of "yellow". Or at least my South Aussie ex said it that way.
@gemfyre855 I have lived here all my life and everyone I know says Yellow. Must just be your ex
I observed the same thing as you mentioned at the end. 😮 My job requires a consultation with my clients and I realise older people tend to stand right in front of me and the room is so small and after I back off trying to gain my personal space back, they come closer again and the wall’s right behind me so I can’t escape. 😂
First one was about how we pronounce the word “here” in different states. I’m Queenslander and so is my missus but her family from South Australia, they put the “ah” on the end of everything. As in, “No-ah”, why-yah! ❤️🇦🇺
Poetic justice, Ryan. My kids said ‘zee’ from Sesame Street!
You should look up how Bluey has changed American children's accents.. As Americans have changed Aussie accents for decades..
ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) is not a "Small and upcoming RUclips channel", it is one of the biggest Australian media + news outlets.
Its called humour lol
He's kidding lol 😊
With a definite tilt to the left....so much for representing ALL Australians as a national broadcaster🤨
@@Wyz369Yeah i agree.
Yes, Al Capone has nothing on our mobs for disorganised crimes committed 😆
In the NT, payback can wait 10 years if necessary. Not random. Elders have good memories and long memories.
That's more than a little bit racist there mate.
I live in a rural town of 200k people. Outsiders saw we have an accent. Pity I moved here from 600km away, and have a completely different accent. But then you delve deeper. Different areas of the town have sometimes prominent differences in accent, especially when comparing bogan unemployed Westies and the new suburbs of metro migrants that have moved here. In that second bunch, you can actually tell from what part of the state capital they moved from. When I left my home state, working class upbringing, I had a very working bogan accent. But courtesy of my childhood, I developed the skill to change instantly to what the people around me sound like, so I don’t stand out. Blows the minds of people at times. Without thinking, I can talk with three other people, a suit wearing CEO, a college educated manager, and a bogan blue collar worker, and immediately sound the same as each one as I talk to them. Using the typical language level, pronunciation, inflection, and lack of or excessive use of profanity filler words. Initially it was a skill used for survival, but now is used to get my foot in the door when conversing with people well above my station. Yeah, we have accents, lots and lots of them. Zoom in, and you can even find differences in different ends of streets. Some accents can blend, and become a new inter area accent. But Woodstock guzzling unemployed bogan and the privately owned third generation doctors/lawyers/CEO’s over the street in the next suburb almost never mix their accents.
This was most funniest video I've seen and I'm a Victorian from Melbourne, Australia and I typed this with no accent😂😂😂😂😂
NO ONE says melBORN! I have never heard an Aussie say that.
As a born-n-bred Australian, I’ve never really been able to tell the difference in accents! I can tell city v bush, upper class v working class, but never a difference between states. I know lots of people can tell so I certainly accept that it’s a thing, but I’ve never really been able to pick it myself. I was raised by a Qld dad and a NSW mum in Perth since I was 6 months old, so yours think I’d be better at picking yo the differences!
Warrnamboolian here, growing up there some forty years ago we pronounced it War/Na/Bool…often shorted to “Warny” or, less often and slightly tongue in cheek, “the Bool”.
The only time we sounded it out was in formal occasions when we dignified the town by deploying all vowels and consonants.
Oh, and bizarrely the good citizens of Warrnambool have their own special way of saying “Timor” …Tai/Mor not Tea/mor. For some reason there is a prominent street with that name and for 150 years we e pronounced it our own special way
Some Victorians used to say elbum instead of album. Disappeared when vinyl was phased out
I'm from Melbourne. While in Germany i was asked why i spoke with a British accent. Yet when i was talking with a fellow Australian girl, a person asked us where we were from because he thought it was English but couldn't understand us. I don't think other countries understand the different aussie accents.
Kiwi here, one of the ways I distingush an Aussie accent from a kiwi one is the "a" sound. Aussies flatten the a sound like the female name Tanya, kiwis usually pronounce the name as Tarnia or Tun-ya (spelt Tania). This might be considered more posh in Aussie but it probably is used more in NZ because of Polynesian/Maori languages which pronounce the "A" as "ar". If you listen to Taika and Chris Hemsworth in interviews you can hear the different "a" as Chris has a Queenslander accent and Taikia is from Aotearoa/NZ.
My grandmother is a regional Queenslander and can confirm she definitely says “Scoo-wul.”
My dad splits the 2 ‘o’s in ‘balloon’ to make a 3rd syllable - buh-loo-wun….he’s Victorian raised and bred
The whole thing about ‘sounding like a wanker’ is that we used to be told to aspire to a more British sound. Our newsreaders had a BBC tinged inflection and some, like the lady complaining about barbed wire, were, as you can see, quite snobby about how we talk.
This all changed in the 1980s and news and tv presenters adopted a more normal Australian inflection.
Differences across states are more about some pronunciation and about individual words that we use for things. For example, Melburnians wear ‘bathers’ to go swimming, Sydneysiders wear ‘cossies’…a shortened form of costume or swimming costume.I’m sure yr familiar with our habit of losing a second syllable and sticking an o or and I sound on the end. Cossies is just another one of these.
In Sydney and Melbourne some speech differences are as old as settlement, as Sydney was poorer, bigger and more convict heavy, whereas Melbourne grew as a gold rush city, richer and slightly more cultured, arguable more ‘English’.
Much has changed in the last 40 years as we have shrugged off the last vestiges of habit that were a part of being a British colony. Thank heavens,we are more just ourselves now, and better for it.
I have lived in 5 different states in Aus. Yes their is a very slight difference in accents, but sometimes it is difficult to distinguish.Prob the same in the USA . Love your easy to understand accent Ryan..
The US has distinctive accents from different parts, especially the southern states which has a strong American accent.
Apart from our native population of course, we were mainly a british colony up until the nineteen fifties. Think about it. We started with a mix of english, irish, scots and welsh along with all their regional dialects. And as people spread out around the country, the various mixes there probably contributed to the dialects. Having said all that I think we have a strong irish influence on our language. In the 1950s the government started bringing in immigrants from italy, greece and malta, followed by waves of people from vietnam and korea etc. More recently they are from the middle east. That probably briefly affects regional areas before they revert back. The 1850s goldrushes brought lots of mixes of nationalities to the state of Victoria. In South Australia they had large influxes of Cornish people to the mines and lots of Germans who took up grapegrowing. All these sorts of things influenced our dialects. I took a ride with a Russian Taxi driver a few years ago. He said he'd been around the world and the Aussies were the worst english speakers of the lot. He said it took him six months before he could understand his passengers. But in Las Vegas a woman said she could sit and listen to us all day. Go figure .... But I wonder how the extensive exposure to media that we have now, will change things ...
I listen to the Australian accent as an Aussie and get so confused, my grandparents sound like that, but mine sounds real weird, I talk really fast so it’s hard to tell, but I sound like gardening australia guy, can’t remember what his name is dammit
Costa!
In Aus a 'mob' is contextual
In neutral terms mob is a group of people without any negative connotation
as an aussie who travels all around the country you can tell what state a person is from will all sound different unless you are not from here
As far as I know, the main accent variations (other than broad, general and cultivated) is the SA accent and how they pronounce “A” and the Melbourne AL/EL pronunciation.
I think most of us lose the "r" in words (and Americans don't), so Melbourne doesn't sound like (American) Mel-borrn - drawn out second syllable - but (Aussie) Mel-bin - short second syllable.
12:42 Id say its because back then the reporter held one mic and they had to be close enough for both their voices to be picked up.
There are so many regional variants of accents in many countries. It's just funny when some of those countries are smaller than one of our states.
I was born in Melbourne and have lived here all my life. I like to speak well and have had people think I'm from England.
I think there are more than three accents (broad, general, and educated). In addition to these, children of immigrants from the Mediterranean area (Greece, Italy, Lebanon) have a very Australian accent but with a slight difference to Anglo Australians (look up Adam Hills' video on ordering pizza in Australia). Aboriginal Australians from the rural and remote areas may have English as a second language and have a distinct way of talking.
I'm in Melbourne and back in the 1970s & 80s could accurately pick if a young person was from Reservoir, Thomastown or Lalor (Melbourne's North). A lot were the children of mediterranean immigrants and had distinct Aussie accents.
You mentioned your son saying "Naur" and that goat gliding vowel, turning a regular vowel into a dipthong, is an example of a localised accent. It is particularly seen in younger generations in eastern Sydney (Bluey is set in Queensland, and I'm not an expert in their casting to be fair). You would very rarely hear that where I'm from (in Perth) unless it was a linking r was involved (preceding word stating with a vowel "no, I'm not"). Most Americans would experience a more homogenised view of Australian accents due to media consumption (how many times would an American hear a wangkatha accent for example)
My son sounds like an American Australian because he loved blippi haha
And “mob” usually refers to aboriginal (Australian native) groups in particular areas. Kind of like different Native American clans I guess.
There are sooo many aboriginal languages! It’s impressive actually.
Mob refers to tribes of indigenous people from different states or even different regions of one state. Mob is generally used by Aborigines in reference to family, extended family or members of your tribe or community.
5:47 we use the 2 vowels in a row to create a diphthong - 2 distinct vowel sounds - which negates the ‘r’ sound at the end
Some people from other countries, e.g., the US, can't tell the difference between Aussie, Kiwi and some English accents, because all those accents are different to theirs. I can't tell the difference between some norther US accents and Canadian, which pisses off my Canadian relatives. Australian and Kiwi accents are apparently both a mixture of English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh accents, just in different proportions. Despite that, Australian and Kiwi accents all sound jarringly different to each other and we (Aus and NZ) can all pick the difference immediately.
I'm from Qld and worked in South Australia for a while and when I first landed in Adelaide, I thought I'd landed in Auckland. The Adelaide accent is closer to Kiwi or English in a lot ways and the Brisbane accent is closer to the US in some ways. There are also very different accents (and pacing) between metropolitan and country accents and between private school/University-educated speakers and working-class speakers. Aside from the accent, there can also be dramatically different slang terms used in different regions. Again, when I first arrived in Adelaide from Brisbane in the late 90s, I often got lost in conversations because of some of the terminology they used (and they did sound like wankers). I copped a lot of shit too, especially for the way I say pool, school, tool, etc. (poo-wul, skoo-wul, too-wul), which was made worse because my Dad was from Liverpool and I originally copied his accent as a kid, so everyone thought I was Irish.
When I first went to the US for a couple of month-long trip, I was determined not to pick up a US twang or drawl, like so many Aussie's do, so I made myself speak more 'ocka' (exaggerated Australian accent), which stuck, and now I talk with a flat, nasal tone like a brickie's labourer from Logan, despite having once been a University lecturer with a 'lecturer' voice like an opera singer from Buckingham. I definitely change my accent (and how much I swear) along a spectrum depending on who I'm talking to.
I've also noticed that younger Australians speak with a more US-style accent now and use more US slang, because our media is more saturated with US shows, some companies just use their US TV commercials here, and the internet is saturated with US content. When I was growing up, there was more UK content than US content, so our accent was more similar to English accents and there was more status associated with sounding English rather than American. Now, all the 'kids' want to sound American and there are all these US customs like Halloween and Proms becoming more popular, when they were just cultural curiosities before, that never actually happened here. It seems sad to me that we are losing our 'uniqueness' and becoming more like the generic US.
If your apply this criteria when defining the Aussie accent then there are 26 million different accents
I know it's been mentioned a couple of times in the comments (though not by the ABC report of course) but the biggest accent divide is between city & country dwellers (certainly here in Victoria anyway). That is far less subtle than the nuance level stuff covered in the ABC report, and it's not just the accent, even more noticable is the different pace of speech: slower in the country and faster in the city
I absolutely love that Bluey is making kids in other countries sound like an Aussie.
But it's even better when the watching parents start using our Aussie terms in their everyday life 😂
When I was playing online games, us Aussies had so much fun teaching everyone our slang words.
It was even better hearing the stories from our American gaming friends.
One of them had a big night on the town and basically told his mates that he was 'knackered' and going home. With 'knackered' being our Aussie slang for 'really tired'..😂
Needless to say, his mates did a double take 😁
As for the term 'Nahhh', basically that's your 2yo saying 'No'.
Now, if they said 'Nahhh.. Yeah', that means 'Yes'
And if they said 'Yeah..Nahh' that still means 'No'
Just visit down under and you'll catch on soon enough 😊
Mate, your videos crack me up (make me laugh so hard !) love your sense of humour. Bloody good ! Sonia in Sydney
"Mob" is just slang for a group of people. Any group. I've heard it applied to companies, even.
Ryan, “ mob” means family or group etc. eg My mob ( family ) are coming over for a BBQ at Christmas,
Only a Yank would think it was the Mafia haha
"dont want to sound like a wanker" as a queenslander i felt that🤣to real
I'm born and raised in Perth. When I went to Europe and the US people frequently guessed that I was from the UK - I've never been there.
Mob is how indigenous Australians refer to their own groups. Not tribe, you would never say tribe. Using the term mob when referring to different groups is a sign of respect. There are over 500 nations of indigenous Australians