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.
Since the influx of British settlers began in around 1788, European Australians have dealt with relative isolation and the need to describe a very different world to their original homeland. Australians have also had a variety of language influences including Aboriginal and surrounding Asian contribution.
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.
According to Richards, the beginning of our Australian accent emerged following the arrival of European settlers in 1788. "It emerged from a process called levelling down because you had all these people who came here on 11 ships from different dialect areas, regional dialect areas across England," he said.
Along the East Coast, there is an approximate correlation between latitude and accent, being the further north one is, the more nasal/broad the accent. Nasality is already evident at the NSW/QLD border. General Australian English is the most common of Australian accents.
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.
New Zealand. The New Zealand accent is most similar to Australian accents (particularly those of Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales and South Australia) but is distinguished from these accents by the presence of three "clipped" vowels, slightly resembling South African English.
If you find the British accent difficult to understand, it's likely you'll find the Aussie accent even harder to grasp as, for the most part, Australia is a melting pot of all the different regional dialects of British English.
Let's face it, most of us are suckers for a sexy accent. According to a recent survey conducted by the popular dating website MissTravel.com, over 2000 American men and women regard Australian accents as one of the sexiest in the world.
The Mainstream Australian Accent is a distinct accent produced by native English speakers in Australia. It's a tough accent to replicate, even for actors in Hollywood.
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.
Within Australia, there are three different types of accents — broad, general and cultivated. Broad would be associated with a more “bogan” type accent, cultivated sounds slightly more English and general sits somewhere between the two.
Australian English is most similar to British English in spelling and sentence construction, although its accent and vocabulary are very distinct from the UK.
Australians move a lot between states, and so that's spreading the same language around." Professor Hajeck also says that mass university education and national media play a role in the Australian accent sounding consistently the same in different regions.
The Australian National Dictionary explains that the Australian usages of mate derive from the British word 'mate' meaning 'a habitual companion, an associate, fellow, comrade; a fellow-worker or partner', and that in British English it is now only in working-class use.
While indigenous Australians had developed over 250 different languages at the time of European colonisation, non-indigenous Australians simply haven't been around long enough to develop regional accents. And as an English-speaking immigrant population, it was their common language that bound them together.
The English accent is the one that is victorious, with the latest survey showing that 17 per cent of people have it at the top of their list.
Australians are usually humble, quite welcoming, polite and contact seeking when meeting strangers. Do not be surprised that strangers greet you, look you in the eyes and start a conversation with you in situations that you perhaps never had expected someone to do in your home country.
Although Australians and Kiwis might sound comparatively similar to the untrained ear, research has shown there is a distinct contrast in the pronunciation of vowels. Australians tend to pronounce their vowels with more emphasis on the sound [ee], whereas New Zealanders make more prominent [u] sounds.
In reference to the British, first attested in Australia in 1912 as rhyming slang for immigrant with additional reference to the likelihood of sunburn turning their skin pomegranate red.
It is the standard British accent that has drastically changed in the past two centuries, while the typical American accent has changed only subtly.
In a 1950 copy of Meanjin, Phillips used the term 'cultural cringe' to define the penchant for Australians to see their artists and writers' work as inferior to anything from overseas, Britain and the United States in particular. As a consequence, many Australians in the cultural field spent time or moved overseas.