aussie accents

[Ken Gargett]

this piece is pretty spot on - though i do tend to agree with Churchill about how awful our accent is (only the kiwi accent is worse).

i remember many years ago when the old man took the family on the then obligatory european holiday for a few months. we got back on the ferry from france to england after about 6 weeks in europe with no contact with aussies, bar the family. i heard people talking and was horrified how they sounded - near illiterate. then i realised they were aussies and that was our accent. i was really shocked.

she is absolutely right re g'day. i swear every tourist can't help themselves. they all throw out the g'day mate. and yet not once, ever, have i heard anyone not from Oz get close to the way we say it. no idea why it is so hard.

 

 

Your Fake Australian Accent Is Terrible, Mate

Americans and the British love to mock how we talk. But they can’t imitate it.

 

By Julia Baird

Nov. 15, 2018

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Hugh Jackman, one Australian whose accent was not spoiled by success.CreditCreditNicholas Hunt/Getty Images for Michael Kors

SYDNEY, Australia — Running out of gas is one of the most foolish things you can do, but I was guilty of it several times when I was a lean-living university student. That changed, though, when Hugh Jackman was hired as the attendant at my local gas station. He was older than me, clean-cut and hot, an improbably nice star of local high school musicals who was known to date unassuming women. I tried not to stumble over my feet — or, say, into his arms — as he greeted me with a big grin when my Volkswagen Beetle sputtered in: “Jules!”

That year, I never ran out of gas.

Today, Mr. Jackman, the star of films like “Wolverine” and “Les Misérables,” is widely adored in Australia, even by those who never saw him behind a cash register. He holds a special place in Australian hearts because international success has not made him pretentious. Most crucially, his accent is still intact.

Australians have a strong, often irrational suspicion of people who leave the country, succeed and change. Even Paul Hogan, the comedian and actor who played that most iconic Australian caricature, Crocodile Dundee, belied his working-class image after he found global stardom and dumped his wife for his more glamorous — and American — co-star. Occasional grumbling is heard about the model Elle Macpherson or the singer Kylie Minogue, both of whom have acquired “global” accents.

By shifting accents, Australian expatriates are seen to be shifting class and status, indicating a sense of superiority to those who remain in Australia. The quickly acquired faux-British accent in particular has been associated with pretension, or a snootiness that reveals desperation to cover a humble antipodean past, to disown a sunburned, bikini-clad family. Part of our fight against a long-held cultural cringe has been the insistence that we do not need to erase our accents to, say, host a TV show or radio program.

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The problem is, sometimes we do need to adapt the way we speak. When I moved to Manhattan in 2006 to work at a newsmagazine, my accent became a hurdle. “We are cursed by a common language,” my editor was fond of telling me, a line he ascribed to some British statesman, who doubtless looked down his pince-nez at his convict-descended cousins. After he told me that he could not understand 80 percent of what I was saying, I began to emphasize my R’s and slow my speech.

We Australians are used to people being rude about the way we talk. Winston Churchill was particularly cruel about our accent. He described it as “the most brutal maltreatment that has ever been inflicted on the mother-tongue of the great English-speaking nations.” At best it’s called cute; at worst it’s dismissed as incomprehensible.

But given that it is so hard to mimic, perhaps we should be proud of its uniqueness.

What Americans — and, to a lesser extent, the British — fail to recognize is that as much as they mock us, they are almost constitutionally incapable of imitating the Australian accent, no matter how often they repeat “G’day, mate!” Even the great Meryl Streep failed to capture it when she portrayed Lindy Chamberlain in the 1988 movie “Evil Angels,” about a woman whose baby is killed in the Australian outback. The line remains famous for its melodrama — “The dingo’s got my bay-bee!” — but in Australia it’s also famous as a reminder that even Hollywood’s greatest stars cannot master our way of speaking.

Foreign media’s inability to capture how Australians really talk has been back in the news recently, thanks to the new season of the American sitcom “The Good Place,” part of which takes place in Sydney. On social media and in newspapers, Australians are baffled — if not outraged — by hearing American actors mock and mangle the way we speak. This has revived a long-held resentment about the fact that we so often appear as caricatures, fools or comic figures onscreen, with failed attempts to capture our accents that making us seem like bigger idiots.

Why are we so hard to imitate? Maybe part of it is that there’s something deeply laid back about the Australian accent. One theory suggests that this is because of our habitat: Given the swarms of flies buzzing around the outback, the legend goes, we developed a pattern of speech that would involve only opening our mouths slightly for fear of letting in insects. That’s probably not true, but we can conduct entire conversations while barely moving our lips.

In recent years, another startling theory emerged: Drunken convicts are to blame. Dean Frenkel, a lecturer in public speaking and communications at Victoria University in Melbourne, wrote in 2015: “Our forefathers regularly got drunk together and through their frequent interactions unknowingly added an alcoholic slur to our national speech patterns. For the past two centuries, from generation to generation, drunken Aussie-speak continues to be taught by sober parents to their children.” A horde of linguists dismissed this, but the theory, predictably, got coverage around the world — it’s what people want to think about Australia.

Professor Frenkel is right that our speech is lazy. He thinks we use only two-thirds of our articulator muscles. We replace T with D (“impordant”) and drop I’s (Austraya) or make them into oi’s (roight!). But we also add vowels in surprising places (future becomes fee-yu-cha).

But the people best placed to mock Australian accents are Australians. Self-parody is a national sport. On Twitter, we lampoon our country by calling it #Straya. We shorten “Good on you” to “onya” and we stretch out the greeting “mate” to “maaaaaaaate,” the length depending on the depth of affection and time of day. These kinds of joyous subtleties are lost on outsiders, though. And that’s what American television and movie producers need to understand. Next time, hire Australian actors to do Australian accents. Like, say, my mate Wolverine.

Julia Baird (@bairdjulia), a contributing opinion writer, is a journalist at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

[JohnS]

 

[99call]

I've heard a bit of this in accent in Sydney. ,,  Like nails down a chalk board...........rest assured guys, nothing sounds worse than a Scouser!!

 

[hedgeybaby]

I've got an English accent. Not London, not my native Somerset but just English. Living in Toronto, I get asked if I'm from Australia all the time. Crikey It;s frustrating!

When I am in the States, people always know I'm English.

If you think about the ingredients of what went into the Aussie accent, Welsh. London, Irish etc etc It is no wonder that it is unique. I suspect Professor Frenkel had been imbibing too much alcohol.

[Islandboy]

I absolutely love listening to Jim Jefferies. His accent plays a big part in his humor. Guess it also helps that we think alike.

[IanMcLean68]

The worst, most cringe worthy attempt at an Australian accent ever award probably goes to Ron Moss. I know this was a mockup and meant to sound fake, but it really makes me cringe!

 

[Fuzz]

On my recent sojourn through the US, I got asked quite a few times, "So where are you from?". Thought it was pretty obvious from my accent, but apparently not so. I had to put on a "fake" 'Strine accent before they guessed I was an Aussie.

[Hammer Smokin']

I learned don't suggest to my Kiwi senior boss that her accent sounds Australian.

It didn't go over well

[Ken Gargett]

23 minutes ago, Hammer Smokin' said:

I learned don't suggest to my Kiwi senior boss that her accent sounds Australian.

It didn't go over well

she should be so lucky. 

but it does not go well, both ways. and they really do have an even worse accent than us. 

[MoeFOH]

My first trip overseas I was away for 3 months backpacking through Europe. When I came home, the customs officials, etc., in the airport all sounded like characters from Muriel's Wedding... I was so desensitised to the accent that I thought they were putting it on... it actually sounded like the put-on Aussie accents from American films... almost killed myself laughing. 

My trip to the States this year, I think most people picked my accent for Aussie. A few weren't sure. The one invariable issue was the pronunciation of Brisbane. Aussies say "Brizbn". This was always greeted with a blank stare. After a while, I learnt that I need to say "Brizbayne", and everyone was then on the same page. 

[Leopolis Semper Fidelis]

1 hour ago, Ken Gargett said:

she should be so lucky. 

but it does not go well, both ways. and they [Kiwis] really do have an even worse accent than us. 

Doesn't it cut both ways?  Kiwis think the Australian accent is worse than theirs.  Who's to say they are right or wrong?  How is the Oz accent "better" than the NZ one?  Isn't it a subjective matter of personal preference/prejudice?  By what criteria can the topic be judged impartially?  Should the "Queen's English" be considered the norm, with other versions of English, wherever spoken, relegated to the inferior category?

[IanMcLean68]

14 minutes ago, Leopolis Semper Fidelis said:

Doesn't it cut both ways?  Kiwis think the Australian accent is worse than theirs.  Who's to say they are right or wrong?  How is the Oz accent "better" than the NZ one?  Isn't it a subjective matter of personal preference/prejudice?  By what criteria can the topic be judged impartially?  Should the "Queen's English" be considered the norm, with other versions of English, wherever spoken, relegated to the inferior category?

LOL. Sorry have to laugh - hardly anyone, except for a small region of the UK, speak the "Queen's English". The gold standard that almost no-one adheres too, even in the UK!

[Ken Gargett]

8 hours ago, IanMcLean68 said:

LOL. Sorry have to laugh - hardly anyone, except for a small region of the UK, speak the "Queen's English". The gold standard that almost no-one adheres too, even in the UK!

actually i can remember from law school, though lord knows why it was raised there, that there is a much higher percentage of indians who speak english correctly (or if you prefer, speak the queen's english) than any other nation.

as for kiwis/aussies, absolutelnot. it has been definitely decreed that theirs is the worst accent. we could vote. they have four million and we have 25 million. but then a requirement that you can only vote if you currently reside in your own country and that would drop them to about 400,000 (the nice ones). 

but by subjective parameters, who is to say that the aussie accent is not the best? and no, i am not supporting that. 

[Leopolis Semper Fidelis]

14 hours ago, Ken Gargett said:

actually i can remember from law school, though lord knows why it was raised there, that there is a much higher percentage of indians who speak english correctly (or if you prefer, speak the queen's english) than any other nation.

as for kiwis/aussies, absolutelnot. it has been definitely decreed that theirs is the worst accent. we could vote. they have four million and we have 25 million. but then a requirement that you can only vote if you currently reside in your own country and that would drop them to about 400,000 (the nice ones). 

but by subjective parameters, who is to say that the aussie accent is not the best? and no, i am not supporting that. 

Decreed by whom?  By what authority?  I agree that some Indians speak "The Queen's English" very well. Aussies and Kiwis alike would probably concur that some accents found in parts of England itself (not to mention areas of the US) would grate on them and would, therefore, be the worst for them.

[ayepatz]

I’m amazed when people expect me to sound like Sean Connery just because I’m Scottish.

Heads up folks: badly fitting false teeth do not an accent make.

Here endeth the lesshun.

[Ken Gargett]

5 hours ago, Leopolis Semper Fidelis said:

Decreed by whom?  By what authority?  I agree that some Indians speak "The Queen's English" very well. Aussies and Kiwis alike would probably concur that some accents found in parts of England itself (not to mention areas of the US) would grate on them and would, therefore, be the worst for them.

i believe it was the overwhelming authority of good taste. 

[HarveyBoulevard]

This is one of my favorite Australian accents.

 

[Derboesekoenig]

I love accents in general, anything besides any of the American accents. Aussie accents add a couple points to women for me. I think it's sexy. Just saying. The only one I had difficulty understanding is when the Scottish talk really fast. I'm just lost

[Leopolis Semper Fidelis]

On 11/21/2018 at 8:25 PM, Ken Gargett said:

i believe it was the overwhelming authority of good taste. 

Such "authority" is purely gratuitous and can be gratuitously denied.

[Ken Gargett]

17 minutes ago, Leopolis Semper Fidelis said:

Such "authority" is purely gratuitous and can be gratuitously denied.

seriously?

[ponfed]

You have no idea how I sympathize. Coming back from a few weeks abroad, when I got in line for the flight back to Montreal, I wanted to pierce my eardrums cause of people speaking French Quebecois. It sounded so, trashy and vulgar and just unrefined. 

Then I realised that I sound like that too... existential dread.

On the plus side, the daycare for our daughter is staffed by mostly Algerian Canadian, who speak a lovely International French with a nice, but slight, accent. 

So our daughter sounds much better than we do, while letting out a few Algerian style : "J'te jure!" or " ah j'men vais aut'part!" for color.

[Derboesekoenig]

7 hours ago, ponfed said:

You have no idea how I sympathize. Coming back from a few weeks abroad, when I got in line for the flight back to Montreal, I wanted to pierce my eardrums cause of people speaking French Quebecois. It sounded so, trashy and vulgar and just unrefined. 

Hahaha yes I cannot stand this, and Spain Spanish. Ugh the lisp. Sorry not sorry