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.
Australians have an accent that is often confused with New Zealand's dulcet tones. However, for those in the know, they are as distinct as Canadian and American accents. Kiwis have a tendency to flatten their vowels, and Aussies have more of a nasally twang.
Article Talk. Strine, also spelled Stryne /ˈstraɪn/, describes a broad accent of Australian English.
The dialects of South East England, including most notably the traditional Cockney dialect of London, were particularly influential on the development of the new variety and constituted "the major input of the various sounds that went into constructing" Australian English.
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).
Today, this means that there are three types of Australian accent. Some people speak with a “general” accent, which is more or less the way it has been for centuries. Other people speak with an accent that is closer to RP English. The third group of people have a “broad” Australian accent.
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.
The most widely accepted theory to why Australians have the accent they do is that the first Australian born children (of the colonizers, not the natives obviously) simply created the first trace of the recognizable accent amongst themselves naturally.
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.
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 ...
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”.
For example, “nice” sounds more like “noice.” The broader the accent, the more pronounced the diphthong.
The results revealed that women and men find different accents attractive, and the only common accents on both lists were Australian and Southern. While men desired Israeli and Colombian accents the most, this was not mirrored amongst the women who were surveyed, who ultimately preferred British and Spanish accents.
#1 The Australian accent is non-rhotic
This is a key feature that only occasionally has exceptions. Sometimes native speakers will pronounce the /r/ sound at the end of the word if linking two words closely but only if the next word contains a vowel sound at the start.
The harsh environment in which convicts and new settlers found themselves meant that men and women closely relied on each other for all sorts of help. In Australia, a 'mate' is more than just a friend and is a term that implies a sense of shared experience, mutual respect and unconditional assistance.
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 is most similar to British English in spelling and sentence construction, although its accent and vocabulary are very distinct from the UK.
“The younger generation are getting rid of the 'yuh' and making it more 'noo',” Ms Hume revealed. “That's a shift that's happening in real time in our accent, which is an influence of US media and their pronunciation of that word.”
The Aussie accent started with kids
The parents spoke with all different kinds of English accents because they came from many places in England. But their children born in Australia formed friendship groups and started to talk in ways that were more like each other and less like their parents.
One reason why people sometimes lose or modify their accents when singing is that the vocal mechanics inherent to singing are different to those of speech, and this can mean that reproducing one's spoken accent while singing is difficult or impossible.
One of the first things you'll notice about Australia will no doubt be the very unique speaking habits of its people. Australians speak fast, 'chew' words and skip pronunciation of letters – combine this with their penchant for slang and abbreviations, and you have a language that's quite difficult to comprehend!
But Australian accents are non rhotic, so that means that we only pronounce an r. when the word is followed by a vowel. So if I say over the river, you can hear it's just over the river, but as soon as the next word has a vowel at the front, then an R sound is pronounced.
It is widely believed that the word pom is short for pomegranate, which Australians and New Zealanders used as rhyming slang for the word immigrant during the 20th century.
There are many factors at play when it comes to why people like accents so much, but some of the main ones for Australia include… The fact that it is so different from other English speaking countries, yet everybody can still understand it.