A fun but detailed look at Australian English accents focussing on General Australian. I look at the history of English in Australia compare Australian accents to pronunciation in other parts of the English-speaking world.
For a more detailed look at the GOAT vowel, check out this excellent video by @DrGeoffLindsey • My favourite vowel: Oh...
The Australian modern accent is so different to even how we spoke 60 years ago. If you watch old street interviews you’ll see
I'm a huge fan of the old aussie accent. It has a little more dignity to it, tho maybe that's coz I always hear it in old interviews with celebs and prime ministers etc.
I remember as a young kid in the 80's hearing Aussie slang like ' Pigs Arse ' and ' Blow me down '....haven't heard those words for about 30yrs
Don't rely overly on those old recordings - accents have absolutely evolved, but some of the difference is down to biases in the technology itself, and people knowing that and deliberately trying to speak to be understood. Dunno if you're old enough to know what a "phone voice" is...? Most people's "phone voice" at least used to sound utterly plummy, 'cause we knew that was what was needed for someone else to clearly understand. Same with radio accents - whether in Australia, the UK, the US, or anywhere else, noone really spoke with those old radio presenter accents.
pigs arse ya haven’t heard someone say that since the 80s
I remember noticing when I was young that very elderly working class Australians (people who grew up in the 19th century) sometimes had surprisingly cultivated accents and not the “broad” accent you might expect. I suspect they might now be perceived as speaking “posh”.
It's so rare to hear a non-Aussie pull off our accent for even snippets at a time. So to nail it so consistently for so long... well, colour me impressed (and oddly flattered)! Nice one, mate
Wow. Thank you. So glad to hear the that.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages It was amazing! I am an English as a second language in Australia, and aside from one or 2 words, I would have guessed you were Aussie. Well done!
As a native Aussie I agree, it's a pretty consistently good one. I knew he was English so I kept listening out for slips.
Wait, he's not occa? That's actually wild af! I've never ever ever heard aussie accents getting nailed. Here the accent and tonality matches the approximate age. That's craaaazy
Holy moly. I'm Australian and didn't realise he wasn't Aussie 😂. Thought he was excellent at doing English accents though lol.
An Aussie here. I would absolutely believe you to be a fellow Australian. It's quite rare to hear a non-Australian mimic the accent so perfectly. Americans do an almost-believable, late 1800s Cockney Londoner when trying to do our accent. Subscribed.
To be fair they also do that when they try to sound English
I am extremely impressed at how well you pulled off an Aussie accent honestly, I have literally never heard a non-Aussie do it so well
As a kiwi who’s lived here in Queensland for 7 years, I was shocked to go to his channel and find out he wasn’t actually Australian hahaha
Kate Winslet😉
Amazing. As an Australian, I have often listened to people demonstrating their ability to mimic accents and have been impressed until they attempt an Australian accent. At that point, I normally lose faith in their ability for all the previous accents. Not with this guy. This was the first time I had seen one of his videos and, at first, I thought he was Australian. I spent the rest of the video waiting for him to slip up but anything I might have questioned I would not have spotted if I was talking to him over the fence. As an older Australian, I feel I can draw upon some older slang - "That was a ripper, Davo!"
Literally thought old mate was Australian until he said "fellow Americans" at the end, holy shit
Your accent was so consistent and convincing we would call you Davo without a second thought :P
Ikr?!
It's not just class differences, there's definitely a some more regionality to it. I was in Melbourne a few weeks ago, and there's definitely a vowel shift in their short e. They pronounce it "Malbn" to my ear, rather than my regional South Aussie "Melbn". And you can pick a Queenslander out of a lineup any day of the week, because they always wear their toggs when they go to the pewl to cewl off after schewl.
Queenslanders drag their vowels. Although with migration from the south it is already changing.
Yea. I've got that Melbourne accent. Like Ned Kally vs Ned Kelly. Allan vs Ellen.
I feel the ‘Victorian’ accent is really distinctive to my Qld ear, there is a shift from ‘e’ to ‘a’ (like someone described above, e.g. Kelly to Kally) that really stands out, often on tv and radio. There also used to be an ad for Bendigo Bank on when we were kids that we’d always imitate when it came on: instead of “so nice to have someone speak to us face to face” they’d say “…fice to fice”. Edit to add - I grew up in country Qld and very used to hearing broad Australian up here so I don’t think it is solely attributable to class distinction.
@@crimsoncobber broad Aussie definitely isn't a class thing, and relates more to rural and northern speech. It's distinct from ocker/bogan.
I’m from Malban an I love the AY UF AL (AFL)
Your range and consistency with accents without becoming extreme with them is a thing to behold. Thank you Dave. I wonder how long this video took you to record!
The late Mark McManus of Taggart strayed out on Skippy. Someone asked him how they kept Skippy so small. Skippy sometimes falls out of a tree. But kangaroos don’t climb trees. Skippy does …
Just a minor correction, the First Fleet arrived in Australia in 1788. It left the UK in May 1787 but took 250 odd days to get to Australia which is possibly where the confusion arose.
Split Enz: 6 months in a leaky boat. 🎶🎵🎶🎼
I saw that too, and thought he wa a year early; but the new accent would have started almost straight away on the ships, not waiting for landfall. Most of the sailing happened in 1787, so … he's quite correct.
@@mrewan6221No. he says “Of the 1,373 people who landed in Sydney cove in 1787 as part of the first fleet...” The First Fleet arrived in Sydney cove on 25 January 1788. That’s why Australia Day is on that date and why Australia’s bicentenary was in 1988. Guessing he had 1787 in his head from the previous slide and just misspoke. Not a huge deal. He also said that people have only been speaking English in Australia since 1787, benefit of the doubt, he may have meant explorers, shipwreck survivors or others operating near Australia then but the first permanent, English speaking settlement was founded in 1788
@@D4N1CU5 If he said "… landed in Sydney Cove in 1787 …" then yes, he got it wrong. (I'm prepared to believe what you wrote; don't wan't to have to search through.) I don't think he _was_ talking about transient Europeans. Other things to consider (and I'm doing this from memory, so could be wrong): • Didn't the First Fleet arrive in Botany Bay a little earlier? I'm thinking about 19th Jan 1788. (Still not 1787, though.) • When was Sydney Cove named that? I think it might just have been part of Port Jackson at the time …. and who named Port Jackson? Was it Cook, or later? • Wasn't Dampier long before both Cook and the First Fleet? I think that was the first English-speaking exploration. Jansz was about 1606. • Australia Day is on the 26th, and the reason for that date is quite flimsy. There was probably some sort of proclamation. Other dates have a claim just as good. (And that's keeping the matter simply about European settlement, and ignoring the elephant in the room.) I've long referred to it as New South Wales Day, and it has very little relationship to the other (now) states or the Commonwealth.
@@D4N1CU5Australia Day is 26th Jan. But yeah, you're correct re 1788.
Your mimic of our accent is by and far the best I've ever heard, insanely impressive.
As someone from Perth, I think there is a subtle but distinct variation between west and east in Australian accents - I can tell fairly quickly when someone is from the eastern states (think of "pool" in WA vs "poo-wel" over east). I think the accent in WA, not counting regional areas, is generally a lot milder of an Australian accent than over east, and a lot closer to a British accent. Maybe this is due to the higher percentage of immigrants from England in WA?
That’s fascinating. I think often, local people can hear subtle distinctions that others don’t notice.
Brits maintain their local accents in WA. THhey degenerate into some odd Generic expat English elsewhere,
Totally agree. I grew up in Perth and then when I moved to the eastern states (Brisbane and Sydney) got asked sometimes if I was from the UK😅
Yes, from Perth here, definitely more mild here for sure. Got mistaken for British as well!!
I'm from Adelaide. I always hated how foreigners (mainly Americans) would try to imitate the Aussie accent. I always thought, "we sound nothing like like that." Then I stayed in Sydney for some time, and those attempts at an Aussie accent made so much more sense. I also find it pretty easy to spot a Victorian, but they're the ones I've had the greatest exposure to.
It's not just the time difference with South Australia, but also who the immigrants were. SA wasn't a penal colony, but rather dominated by the mining industry. Thousands of Cornish miners were brought in. Has anyone done a study on the Cornish influence on South Australian English? (I'm descended from a Cornish mining family; our branch came to West Virginia, another branch went to South Australia.)
That would be fascinating. A topic for a research trip.
South Australia is interesting in many ways. It also had strong German migration in the 1950s, mainly dairy farmers who established Rudolf Steiner style organic farming. That's why you see towns like Hahndorf and Germantown in the cycling tour down under that's in SA. Actually this created something weird; German settlers in Barossa Valley in South Australia kept using German as it was in the 1950s and never changed. Thus you take a current German person and they meet a Barossa Valley German migrant: they barely understand each other.
That's like the German spoken in various parts of the USA like Pennsylvania and Texas. @@musicalneptunian
@@musicalneptunian do you mean the 1850s? in our german class we did an assignment on the lutherans that came out to SA in the 1840-50s. i'm sure there would have been more recent immigrants as well but the towns that you mentioned are old german lutheran towns.
Add to that the major influx of German immigrants like my own family that settled there in 1836
6th generation South Australian of free settlers from the UK here…. I can definitely tell the differences in pronunciation from work colleagues who are from Victoria- branch, school, pool, dance, graph etc - when I first went to Sydney for a holiday at 18 locals thought I was from New Zealand!
I'm Victorian but lived in Adelaide when I was little, some pronunciation has stuck so people look at me funny with dance, castle etc..
@@BB-xx3dvI think The Downers have their own special upper class Adelaide accent all to themselves! 😅
Dave, O M G. I am an Australian and have legitimately never ever EVER heard someone who fooled me with an Australian accent like this video has. A lot of linguistic youtubers have perfect pronunciations of the way we say words, but as soon as it comes to sustaining the accent, it always goes out the window and is never passable. UNTIL I SAW THIS! As a FURTHER testament, I sent your french video to my french relatives and they didnt believe me when I said you weren't french either. Sir, you are a truly an accent and language master. This is absolutely flawless.
Hi Hannah
There are some interesting distinct accents across the country. I’m from NSW and in western Sydney they have a very unique accent due to lots of cultural mixing. The more you head out west, it’s far ?thicker as an accent. Also, some indigenous Australians have a different way of speaking and some novel slang.
Even Aboriginal English varies a lot. Koori language is different from how it's spoken up north, for example.
People almost never talk about the Sydney accent when discussing Australian accents but it's extremely apparent when you hear someone from there. Anecdotally to me it seems to come from Mediterranean accents like Italian and Greek
Agree! Western Sydney has its own accent. Mostly influenced by Arabic and Greek.
@@dbenedict3555 people confuse Western Sydney and broad Australian accents. Broad Aussie is a lot more Irish and Scots.
@@dbenedict3555and Lebo
Incredible Dave. Spot on with the accent. One thing to add - in Melbourne we have dropped “el” for “al”, so “Halp”, “Malbn” and “Halicopter”. It’s an easy way to tell the difference between a Melburnian and the rest of the east coast
Thank you. I’ll have to listen out for that.
but they don't know this in Malbn, in Hobart it is obvious, think it's only in the name of the city though
@@meikala2114 What's obvious in Hobart? I come from there and i don't know what you are suggesting.
This is true. I'm from Northern Victoria and there is no difference between the first vowel sound in Alice or Ellis. The way the 'e' Melbourne is pronounced is less like an 'a' and more like a very short version of the 'ei' sound in veil. @@DaveHuxtableLanguages
Sorry, no one else in Australia pronounces Melbourne "Meel-borne" though. It's rather pretentious local thing and driven by class snobbery (certain suburbs etc) in my experience. The fact is (listen when you travel next time) in normal unaffected speech for 99.9% of Australians the word Malbourne and Melbourne are pronounced identically. Gerard Whately the sport commentator is a good example of this funny "Meelbourne" pronunciation. Of course 100% agree that for locals it is always Melbun never Melborn (American style).
There definitely are geographical differences in Australian accents. I never noticed it as a teenager but, when I travelled the world in the 80s for months and met other Australian tourists, I realised how different our accents were and I could unfailingly tell people from Sydney, Melbourne (my home town) and Adelaide, in particular. All the polyglots such as yourself nearly always use Sydney accents as examples, even when you say there are no geographical differences.
Yeah it's strange that this is a blind spot for him when he's usually so accurate. I live in Brisbane and I can readily tell locals from Sydneysiders and of course you can tell which side of Sydney a person is from.
It’s ok guys he lumped all londoners as cockney too. Having lived here for 40 years there are at least 4 distinct accents in london between those who speak English as a first language. I can even tell the difference between the smaller suburban towns (at least in the west where I’m from). You guys gets to hear the subtleties on a daily basis. But to the rest of us you all sound nearly the same.
@@MrDanmjack Maybe we all sound the same because nearly all Australians on TV or in movies are from Sydney 🙂
@@normandiebryant6989more like all the most successful went to NIDA .... in Sydney.
eeeeeh He does say it's *more* homogenous, but he also points out regional differences in Aussie English, for example the trap/bath split. Not sure he attempts to convince anyone that the entire country has exactly one accent
I’m glad you included the “tip” for Americans about the “Aussie” nick name. You nailed it with the “Mike Jagger” analogy. 😉👍🏻
Who would mistake Mick for Mike though? They are spelled differently.
Dave, your Australian accent is uncanny, flawless even. Neither 'ocker', nor 'drongo-uncouth', nor overly nasal, nor overly refined either. Just about the best all-round imitation I've heard, and quite frankly even better than a lot of Australian actors who themselves overdo the ocker-drawl oftentimes. Well done sir!
Wow - I’m honoured.
Something that I loved is that you didn’t say that we *don’t* have regional variations, just that we have larger sociocultural variations than regional variations. Many youtubers have said that we don’t have regional variations at all which is simply not true. I can tell very quickly whether or not someone is from the eastern states as opposed to western australia or south australia but it would probably be a lot harder for people out of australia to tell these differences. Even within the eastern states there is more variation. It seems like your general australian accent is closer to a sydney accent, a melbourne accent differs in a few places but most noticeably is that they tend to replace the e in melbourne and similar with something closer to the trap vowel or something like this: /'mælbən/
I sometimes cringe when I hear my own accent in a recording - I've always wanted to sound a little more cultivated. But then I travel o/s and hear another Australian somewhere close by and my heart skips 🥰
Your Australian accent is extremely good, not overdone like most people would do. The pacing of your sentences reminds me of the guy who does the finance report on the ABC news. I wouldn't say that the Australian and NZ accents are very similar, for Aussies and Kiwis they're like chalk and cheese. And Australia is pronounced Stray-ya, lol, afterall we speak Strine!
depends on the New Zealander. i play games with some guys from New Zealand and their accent is pretty different from what you would expect from say an older generation kiwi. you can tell the difference if you listen but it doesnt jump out at me instantly like i would expect.
Alan Kohler (Alun Cola)
@@saxongreen78 Yes, that's him. I like his wit.
@@liam3104 in a weird coincidence, my name is also liam, and i also have a kiwi friend with a much different accent... they sound more english than anything, with no hints of any kiwi pronunciation
The common joke amongst Aussies is that New Zealander’s say fush and chups. Whilst this is relatively true for most JAFA’s, when i was working in the South Island, i noticed they had eliminated the vowels all together. They were pronouncing it as fsh and chps, with no discernible vowel sounds whatsoever.
As an aussie who lived and worked in the USA (Southern New Hampshire and Boston) for several years, it would amuse me that Murricans thought that we talked "strange". I once had someone in MA, apologize that she couldn't understand me "I can't understand your New Jersey accent" - I found fairly quickly, that I could pick out NY, Boston, Maine Philly and several other accents fairly quickly.
I almost forgot you weren’t Aussie for a second there 😂
That’s good to hear.
This is the first video of yours I've seen, and it took me until 3:50 to suspect that I wasn't listening to a native Australian speaker. As an Australian myself, I'm amazed at how brilliant your Australian accent is. Well done!
Me too! It took me even longer before I started doubting myself weather he was Aussie or not…😮
Yep! I thiiink the only slip was Rough·edges was spoken as rough·ed·ges? Maybe?
Yeah I thought it was brave of an Aussie to attempt a Brummy accent!
It’s really very good, but ‘edg-is’ was a subtle giveaway. There were a few other places where I felt the accent was a little exaggerated but could have just been a regional difference.
I thought it was the 'that' , its a bit more forward/clearer/wider than how we would say it. Me at least.
SOooooo looking forward to this episode. As a North-Queenslander I always loved the uniqueness of the "Aussie" accent AND it's origins in UK (and later US) cultural influences. This breakdown is awesome so thanks for that. As other Aussie viewers have and will comment though, I used to tell tourists that one of the main differences were country and city (perhaps what you describe as broad and cultured) - those raised in the outback or far north have such a lovely 'twang' and use 'ay?" regularly in conversation to end sentences. I've lost that having moved from the country and now have been living in the city for 30 years but travelling home to family the twang returns. Love this episode - thanks so much
My pleasure. So glad you enjoyed it.
Aussie soaps were popular in UK when I was young, and it was tangentially amusing to hear the schism in accents between the characters who were 'working class', of the 'monied/professional classes' who spoke with something closer to RP (although very much still Antipodean) and those in between - think "Queen" Bea Smith vs Vera Benett vs Erica Davidson in _Prisoner: Cell Block H._
You were clearly an even bigger fan than I was. Yes, cell block H was A good one.
I lived in London for a few years and the only English accent that I recognised Australian in, was the East London accent…. Found a book when I was there “The Lonely Planet Guide to Australian”… It reckoned the Aussie accent had already started to form with the first generation of kids… Great vid old mate, cheers
Oh, this video was so great. Thank you good sir! I have been fascinated by accents for past few years, and this video was particularly interesting for me because I currently live in the UK (but haven’t always so I don’t really have a specific accent), am studying (so hear a lot of different accents around university) and am going to Australia a little while next year!! Also, the format you used was clear, understandable, and engaging! Incredible how you can do all the different accent features so accurately! Will be coming back to this again I think! Subscribed! 🦘
Holy moley, im a bit shocked you're not one of us. I had you picked as someone who grew up in NZ, and spent most of your life in AUS. The tempo you speak is absolutely spot on, just missing the flippant expletives. Outstanding.
Wow. Thank you!
Love this channel. So underrated. Thanks
This is the best explanation I’ve come across on KZhead thanks for your work
Absolutely incredible. Informative the whole way through! As an Adelaidean it’s interesting to see the historical perspectives on how pronunciation diverged from the east coast. These relatively subtle differences make nailing an Australian accent so difficult, and yet you would have me fooled. Thank you
Really enjoyable video. Fascinating detailed journey. Thanks.
Dave I absolutely love your channel. Very informative and fun with a smattering of funny
Great. Thanks for letting me know.
Such a fascinating video. Thanks for making this.
Interesting video, you could probably make a much longer video about our accent and still not cover many of the nuances. One influence you didn’t touch on was the teaching of English in schools that prevented the Aussie accent from becoming more widespread earlier. Early recordings of Australians typically had a much stronger Queens English influence and I think it was largely when they allowed Australian pronunciation to be taught in schools that it really flourished. I’d guess that private schools of the time might have kept teaching proper English which has influenced the more refined sounding Aussie accent. Apart from the Indigenous accent most accents here feel like they could be plotted on a scale where the broad, ocker accent found more frequently in the country, is most Australian and the more refined, city accent is “less Australian” (in a sense). There are many variations based on culture but the main accent that I would suggest is “class” based, is the bogan accent. Check out the most Australian man interviewed for a classic bogan and you can see the reaction of the tv presenters talking to him via video link. Neel Kolhatkar’s old youtube accent videos are quite eye opening in his nuanced examples of the many variations of accent by culture, age and gender. Or watch old Aussie tv shows like Wog’s out of work or Acropolis Now for great examples of greek Australian accents - maybe avoid Mark Mitchel’s ‘Con The Fruiterer’ skits from the Comedy Company. Nick Kyrgios has a subtle greek influence being half Greek… Melbourne has the largest population of Greeks outside Athens so Aussies with Greek heritage have influenced the Melbournian accent more specifically. Im from Brisbane and Queenslanders tend more towards a Steve Irwin broad accent although rarely so extreme. For the most part, “Class” is much harder to define in australia. While some accents might sound higher or lower class I don’t think it’s quite so clear. I personally shift my accent depending on who Im talking to and I expect many people do so you might pick one persons accent as being more refined then hear them in another context and they sound much more broad. Cultural cringe used to be spoken of much more, especially when an Aussie was over seas and people thought they were turning up their accent to sound more Aussie.
Thanks so much for your very informative comment.
Yes, no longer heard, but Con the Fruiterer’s accent was exactly the accent of railway announcements and milk bars (and fruit and veg shops) in late 60s to late 70s Australia, but out of currency by the time the Comedy Company came out. Those southern European migrants who ‘took over’ all those small businesses during this time, or worked in the ‘ordinary’ jobs other Aussies were happy to step out of, and didn’t let ‘Australian as a Second Language’ get in the way of getting on, made Straya an even better and more interesting place than it already was. I moved from the country to Newtown in Sydney to go to Uni in 1973. Was gobsmacked to see that so many of the shop signs in King St Newtown were in Greek (seemed like 75%). As a typical student of the day, I worked in a pub as a Bar Useful picking up glasses. A fellow Bar Useful was a retired Greek bloke who was one of the wave of migrants who came to Oz in the 50s. He’d owned a milk bar, worked hard to make a good living, raised his family and set them on their roads to life, sold the milk bar (to a family of more recently arrived Greeks) and retired. He took up Bar Usefulling because he wanted to keep active and it gave him a way to maintain contact with all the people in the area who had frequented his milk bar (probably for real hamburgers and cigarettes mainly, 60s!), many of whom who were also the regulars at the local pub. Now he had been in Oz for more than 25 years by then, using English daily, but Con the Fruiterer was an exemplar of diction and purity of speech in comparison. I was always having to ask him to repeat himself, or guess at what he was saying. His grammar was fine, but getting his tongue around the sound of words of Aussie English was like a, um, er, foreign language to him. His English pronunciation was so exaggerated in an Aussie way, that it sounded neither English nor Australian. Since coming to Oz, he had never been back to Greece, so now retired, he went back home for a visit. He was telling me about his trip, including how he had spoken no English during this time and of how the Greek language had idiomatically changed over the years (with its equivalents of ‘hey man’ ‘far out’ , 'dig it', ‘cool’ etc, that were then the vogue in the English speaking world, and that he was considered old-fashioned in how he spoke Greek). He finished with an anecdote about the journey back to Oz. His flight back involved a stop-over in Rome. He said that he was in the queue at Rome airport when, among the hubbub he detected an Aussie accent, and he said he was so excited at hearing it, he rushed over, and in what would have been full impenetrable Con the Fruiterer Plus, excitedly greeted these total strangers with “Ah Australian accent, bee-you-deful, I love it,” and telling them how wonderful it was to hear the native tones of his adopted country again. It turned out they were (mainly) a group of Aussies born to Italian migrants who were coming home from their own exploration of their roots, and after being initially startled by this mad Greek, worked out what was going on and nobody ended up being arrested for assault. Love our melting pot.
@@thickquinkly1560loved him
Your channel popped up out of nowhere and I am loving each of your videos. You’re smart, funny, and definitely very cute!
You are one of the very few to get Melbourne right. Very impressed. You need to do a video on our distinct Aussie dialect of slang now.
Legend has it that South Australia has the cultivated accent not due to it's later colonisation, but due to the fact that it was the only colony that didn't accept convict ships. Probably started by South Australians who try to look down on the interesting states.
I can’t imagine that ordinary people spoke that differently from convicts, especially given the very minor crimes that people were transported for.
I think the story goes that they deliberately spoke in a 'posher' manner to differentiate themselves due to their perception of being 'better.'
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages South Australians do something unique; they pluralize things a lot. For instance they will say the brand Holden as Holdens. NO idea why.
I never knew people from Adelaide looked down on the rest of us. The rest of us never even think about Adelaide.
@@musicalneptunianbecause Holden was originally South Australian. He had a big factory there before any GM involvement
Excellent. For more up to date cultural references I would recommend listening to bogan street talk (eg the show Housos) and the Melbourne tones of "Kath and Kim" (especially in the snobby voices of characters Trude and Prue). Love your videos mate!
Thanks for the tips!
Amazing video, absolutely incredivle work!
Finally! You've answered all of the questions I've been asking for many years.
Nice work! Nailed it! 🙌🏻
We definitely do have regional differences in Australia, although they are not as distinguished as much compared to the US and UK. But we do have some regional/geographic differences, especially in the way we pronounce certain vowels and diphthongs. For example, in most of the country people pronounce the name for "Melbourne" as [ˈmɛɫbn̩] yet we pronounce it as [ˈmæ͡ʊˡbøn] or [ˈmæ͡ʊˡbən] here in Southern Victoria and parts of Tasmania. (as a result of the /ɛ/ moving down to [æ] before glides, /ɪ̝/ moves down to [ɛ], ergo getting /mɪ̝ɫk/ → [mɛ͡ʊˡk]) Another difference would be in the long a vowel, we truly have 3 different ways of pronouncing it. In Western Australia and South Australia (typically Adelaide) it is pronounced identical to the stereotypical Southern British [ɑː], in Queensland and New South Wales it is pronounced as [ɐː] and everywhere else it is pronounced as [aː]. As you can see, we do have some regional distinctions in the Australian accents.
Yes... I agree!
Charming video all around. Subscribed!
I think the most subtly impressive part of the whole video is how you nailed the phrase 'have to do' at 11:10 - that is so so good.
Mate this video was awesome!!!!
I'm Aussie, and I reckon your accent is close to perfect. Can I say the two place I thought it slipped? (and I might be wrong, I'm from Melbourne and I realise this will vary across the country). The opening "g'day" could have slightly more of the "y" sound. The other thing is the word "edges", which I would say with more of a schwa as the second E and less of an "i". But you sound more Aussie than I do, because, living in Europe I lost the tendency to call 12 months a "yiya" and pronounce it more RP now.
Hi. That's good to hear and thanks for pointing out where there's room for improvement. Others have mentioned g'day, so maybe I wasn't totally in the groove yet. Sad to hear you've lost your yiya.
I flatted with a Welsh person in London and it took a while to work out that a yerr was a year!@@DaveHuxtableLanguages
I thought the pronunciation of the word "ports" was also just a little bit off, also seemed to get the bath/dance stuff a bit confused
Also the way he pronounced “schwa” :)
omg, yiya, i'm never going to not hiya that evə again
As a student of linguistics while at Uni, former English teacher and a lifelong mimic of all kinds of accents, I'm really impressed by your excellent videos, not least for the outstanding job you do with Australian and British/Irish accents. An interesting feature of Australian English which has emerged in the last 30 years or so is what could be called "New Cultivated". Spoken largely by Gen Z and younger speakers, especially in formal situations, it's characterised by flattened/lengthened "ee" "ay" and "oo" vowel sounds, more usually heard in the US, although it's altogether different from a US accent but that may well be the influence. Also an accent common among children and grandchildren of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern migrants, which "shushes" the "s" sound before a "t" or "tr". It's so pervasive that general speakers can often be heard to do it. There's a PhD in this I'm sure! Maybe one day... I have a few other theories and observations about our regional variations, which are not just lexical and phonic, but also in rare cases, syntactical. Happily subscribed and looking forward to more! Cheers mate! You're a dead set legend!
Thanks Dave, that's impressive. Subscribed. 👍🏻
Thank you for this wonderfully informative video. Raised in Tasmania I can now understand why my South Australian father pronounced castle and dance differently to my Tasmanian mother. My Scottish descended grandmother also pronounced pattern as pat-ren. Much to the amusement of us grandchildren.
It's great hearing examples, even more fun when you do the examples all yourself
Great video, well done! If I didn't know and this was a video on some other topic, I would have believed you were Australian! Perfect general aussie accent!
Hi Dave, Australian here. You surely got the last vowel in “hamster” right at 2:02, but I’m afraid the first vowel didn’t sound Australian to me due to the lack of BAD/LAD split, in which stressed /æ/ becomes lengthened before voiced stops and nasals in certain words. Before nasals, this vowel is often raised, but this varies by speaker. I would’ve said [hɛ̃ːmstɐ] Thanks for shining a light on Australian English!
I came across this video somewhat randomly and so didn't know anything about you. I'm Australian. Eventually realising during the video that you're NOT Australian blew my mind, because your accent is so thoroughly convincing.
That's one hell of an Aussie accent you've got there. Especially doing the general accent when most can only do the broad.
I currently live in Australia and have been for the past 20 years. I only found out that this dude isn't from Oz by finding out in the comments and checking out his page. I am absolutely mindblown. Awesome work mate 👏
I went to UNi at JCU in Townsville in the mid 70s - we found that you could pick accents and colloquialisms - it was possible to identify by their speech people from Cairns, Tully, Mt Isa, etc. Most interesting were the twin towns of Ayr and Home Hill about 5 kms apart separated by the Burdekin river - you could pick whether someone was from north or south or the river in their speech.
I find often if you can’t tell the location from the accent itself (though there are definitely regional differences, and after living in the UK for a few years, I can usually pick where other Aussies are from when I hear them), then you can pick where someone is from by the words they use, potato cakes or scallops, bathers or swimmers, etc.
potato scallops, togs. Guess where I am from, lol
No Idea! I say potato cakes and togs, so there must be a bit of a Venn diagram happening with usage! @@fionaottley4976
Verges, polony, blood noses.
@@fionaottley4976 I'd say probably Qld. probably north of Rocky
Aw, I hoped you'd go into more detail about the GOAT vowel, especially with the R-bunching, because as an American I've always tried to mimic that sound but have never got it right. It was really interesting to hear about the other sounds though!
I saw a great example of how we say things so differently between USA and AU- ask someone to say this sentence- "Ask the master to pass the banana".....lol, its funny to see our differences in the same language.
You did quite a good job of speaking in a general Aussie accent. Most Brits and Americans make us sound like Cockneys when they try to imitate us, which is just WRONG 😅 We do have some regional differences; you can often tell if someone's from Adelaide, for example, because they have an odd British inflection in some of their vowels & consonants. Also, it's important to remember that we're a multicultural nation. Immigrants, and some ppl born here of a non-English speaking background, have a huge range of accents.
Brits definitely don't think Aussies sound like Cockneys. The nasal twang and upward inflexion at the end of sentences isn't a Bitish thing, although, with American influence, the latter is slowly becoming normalised by younger people.
@@BillDavies-ej6ye We don't all do the upward inflection. It tends to be younger ppl, especially women. And you may not think we sound like Cockneys, but that's how you make us sound when you try to imitate us 😅
Slowed down Cockney but every sentence rises in pitch at the end like it is a question?
@@KindredBrujah no, that's an exaggeration.
This is excellent, thanks so much.
There are very subtle but noticeable differences in Aus accents from different regions and states. South Aussie for one is easy to pick straight away. eg They tend to say "gehl" in place of "girl", and they give more weight to vowels in words like "shower" whereas in NSW they are more likely to say "shour".
Mate, you were spot on. You're Shtrayan was top shelf.
That was FUN 🎉😂. EXCELLENT. Cheers mate, thanks from Herefordshire.
Glad you enjoyed it
You are the best at this kind of thing I've seen. Well done. Your channel deserves more views. I like the way you do it, with the videos playing, but may I suggest you use some examples of people speaking, perhaps amusing ones, when people have very strong accents. That will make the experience even better and get a few laughs. I don't mean that people will mock the accents, only that very strong accents are amusing in general.
A few more notes, the pronunciation of double letters does vary by state: Queenslanders will often say pool pronounced poo-l on the lips, whereas New South Wales will say pool more like pull. South Australians will often pronounce their double L's as a W, so pull will sound like puw and well like wew
Personally in my experience, the "poo-l" thing has been way less of a regional thing and more of an age/generational thing. Across the country I've only heard old people say it that way. I'm in my 20s and only ever heard young people say it similarly to "pull". But that's just my experience
@@masterpage69420I agree
I have noticed that a number of Asian ESL accents have incorporated the intrusive "r" into words even when there is no additional word after names such as "Chinar", "Asiar" and "Australiar".
Yes I’ve heard that a lot in China.
That could could be related to hard attack as well. I think possibly they lengthen the last syllable slightly but still end with a glottal stop. It kind of tricks the non-rhotic ear into hearing a 'non-rhotic r', so to speak.
They might be from Beijing. They use a thing called 'er hua' which adds 'er' to the end of certain words. Curiously, it is taught as a standard part of Mandarin classes for non native speakers as well.
found this channel yesterday and I'm planning on binge watching a fuck ton of his videos. his passion for language is very obvious, just lovely to watch someone who is clearly passionate about something talk about that thing.
Fantastic analysis of our accents. Also, LOL that the Northern Irish accent is accompanied with an angry face.
Excellent video thank you!
You're so cool. I learned a lot. Thanks.
Always wondered why folks kept asking me about my accent, i grew up in S.A, Port Lincoln and this explains it so well haha.
I was born to an American father and an Australian mother. They took me to the US as a newborn and I came back to Australia at the age of five. When people would ask me my name I’d reply “Kylie” and they’d say “Kaylie? how do you spell that?” I’d spell my name and they’d say “Ohhh KOILIE! Why didn’t you say that?”. It took me ages before people could understand me.
Thanks for your interesting video, David. However, why do you cite 1787 as year in which "people have been speaking English in Australia"? The First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay between 18th & 20th January 1788, moving to Sydney Cove on 26 January after Botany Bay had been found to be unsuitable for settlement. Am happy to be corrected if there is now other evidence of which I am unaware. That aside, I appreciate all the hard work & scholarship behind your video. Well done!
Interesting Dave! Not forgetting their love of shortening words; ute, Brissy, Tassie, avo, arvo, brekky, truckie, Chrissie, defo, facey, maccas, servo, Straya, tinny, etc.
I love those - though the focus here was on pronunciation.
No-one says Facey 😂 and 'straya is often said sarcastically 😊
What is facey meant to be?
@@secretagentpaul9078 the social media platform, apparently
@@secretagentpaul9078I'm guessing he means Facebook. Fun fact though the term Selfie actually came from Melbourne, it's a classic Aussie shortening that caught on globally.
The only perfect Aussie accent I’ve heard. That’s an amazing accomplishment!
I grew up in Canada , but my mom had a friend who was like a surrogate aunty because my mom was an immigrant and away from her older relatives. This friend was from Adelaide originally and had an amazing accent . If she were alive today she’d be 100 I think. What I remember is that the vowels were very elongated and nothing sounded broad. I don’t think she came from a particularly posh background but it just seemed that she sounded classy even though she was quite unpretentious .
G'day ! I really like your videos, and your choice of subjects, keep it up !
Glad you like them!
This is fascinating. ❤
Good stuff man! You should clip this sort of thing up into ‘Shorts’, you would get heaps of engagement from that! And thanks for NOT asking me to like or subscribe like a thirst king!
Love this one! I lived on the NSW/QLD border and used to enjoy picking if people were from north or south. There also seemed to be a coastal/inland distinction too, where the surfy ones seem to block the nasal passage, and the inland had a drawl. Melbourne has a unique accent, just a notch deeper. And yes skip, I pressed the button.
That's what I noticed too growing up in far north Queensland, In far north Queensland we spoke with a completely different accent from southern Queensland There is a difference between north an south Queensland Same in NSW and when I move back to my families ancestral district on the NSW table lands there was a clear difference between regional NSW an the coastal English speaker's Spoken with a drawl sounds like hillbilly English or even ebor English my friend couldn't even understand people from ebor back country ha ha
Legit thought you were Aussie as this is the first vid I'd seen, well done mate 😂
Ever heard the *old* Essex accent? Not the modern one which is from Londoners that have moved out, but the really old Essex accent. It is pure Australian.
Not really though I grew up in Essex. I’ll have to check out the BBC accent archives.
I have a similar story for West Sussex, though the only similar accent I know of is the high cracking voice people used to adopt, years ago, as an impression of 16th century or earlier English.
Wow, I thought you were a fellow Australian at first. Very good accent. I'd be interested to hear more about the 'cultivated', 'general' and 'broad' as I've noticed these differences here too.
great video! i didn't pick up on the fact that you might not be aussie until a few minutes in... a few mistakes tipped me off, but overall your accent is really consistent and convincing. if this wasnt a video on the australian accent, i wouldn't have questioned it. also a really interesting video on aussie accents overall. the bit about many of our Ls being dark Ls makes so much sense - whenever my linguistics professors try and get me to feel the difference between light/dark Ls i can never work it out!
Im from south australia, and was waiting eagerly for the bit about the differentiation of path/bath/dance etc. Amazed that someone aside from me actually thinks about it. I always thought it was a matter of the people who came to south australia initially being generally more high class, I hadn't picked timing's role in it. Now i can be even more of a nerd when people ask about it. thank you! this was fascinating. (Only time i thought your accent slipped was when you said 'port' it was a bit too 'p oo r t', apologies for the arpabet, which reminds me more of a NZ sound. Actually, a few factors of your accent sound more NZ than i expected, but that is honestly just a real thing that happens to aussie accents these days haha)
German is a big part of what SA people have their own accent.
Great video id love to see a video on the various english accents of southern africa ie Zambia, Zimbabwe and south Africa
Well done, Dave. I concur with other comments about our regional differences and the change over time. One thing you haven’t picked up is the difference across space and time in how ‘a’ is pronounced. The geographic difference is very clear in Newcastle (NSW, long a) and Castlemaine (Victoria, short a). A change I have noticed over the last few decades is in how ‘dance’ is pronounced, with ‘dahnce’ now being the norm; even my younger sisters have changed their pronunciation - but I haven’t, perhaps because the change happened when I had already ‘permanently’ established my pronunciation.
Those of us who grew up in Castlemaine Victoria can always spot interlopers as they use a long a 😂
This was actually fantastic
Why thank you!!
Perfect accent - really! I had to check you weren’t putting on the British accent earlier. I’ve never heard such a good one before. Of course, not even Australian sounds just like it, but as far as the “average” Australian it’s completely spot on.
Wow this is a fantastic Australian accent. One of the best I've ever heard, congratulations. Only a couple of weird sounds that stand out 😂
First time viewer, your Aussie accent is superb. I would have guessed you were English rather than American, not because of the number of English accent references, but because of little tiny indications on words that came out a bit more British in my opinion, but I was looking hard for any slight errors that didn’t quite sound like my Melbournian accent not to pick but just because I was suspicious that your Aussie accent was so AMAZING The British sounds make it sound more posh tbh 😂 like the opposite or rural QLD Aussie
Masterclass. I'd like to see you do a vid on Australian accent by class divide.
Wow, as an Aussie I don't know how to feel about not realising that you're not actually Australian and were putting on our accent so well. You fooled me! There were only a couple of times you sounded a little off and I just chalked it up to you being from SA or Tassie where they all sound a little weird.
There are definitely regional accents here. I live 2 hours outside of Sydney and I can tell the difference between if you're one hour either side, east or west of where I am.
This is very useful! I have a friend in Australia and i was struggling woth australian accent. Thanks a lot m8!!!
Glad I could help!
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages yeah :)
Like a international student that wanna be part of this country and feel full integrated to the society this video is really useful to keep improving my Australian accent, thank you.
My pleasure. Best of luck to you!