The Australian Accent | #EnglishwithanAussie Ep. 001
JINGLE:
Hello and welcome everybody. I’m your host Adriana, and you're listening to English with an Aussie, the no. 1 podcast spoken entirely in slow English
INTRO:
So, you’re planning your next trip to Australia? Perhaps you’re already there and struggling to understand? Wait…..let me guess you thought the Australian accent was going to sound juuuust like the British accent, and now it doesnt? Yep, I get it. Well I’m here to help. So sit down, relax, and let me, an experienced teacher, help YOU start speaking and understanding like a native. In today’s episode we will be talking about the Australian Accent and how there are 3 distinct sub-accents which you will hear depending on where you live or who you’re speaking to. To make this easy, I will be sharing with you all some famous actors in which you might like to look up later and listen to. This should give you a better idea of what I’m talking about. To finish the episode I will be answering a popular question; can your accent change over time? Stay tuned to find out the answer. So, without further adieu let’s jump in! (jingle fade out)
WHY IS AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH SO STRANGE?
What do you think of when you hear the Australian accent? I’ll give you a minute to think about that. Whatever you just thought about is completely okay. I know whenever I open my mouth in a foreign country I can see people almost analysing me and thinking ‘is this girl American? no she doesn’t pronounce her /r’s/, she must be British then’. And when I tell them that I’m neither American, nor British, then comes the question ‘well then what ARE you, your accent is so strange?’. Here comes the hard truth guys, Australian English IS strange. Our pronunciation is totally different, our vocabulary is different, and don’t get me started on the idioms! For those of you who are not familiar with the word idiom, it simply means a funny phrase that people use that doesn't have a literal meaning so we need to figure out the meaning ourselves. It all sounds confusing right? Well let me give you an example. Imagine, you are just about to present your project to the class and you turn to your teacher and tell her ‘Miss Smith, I have some serious butterflies in my stomach’, this means you are feeling very nervous, it’s as if butterflies were whizzing around inside your stomach. Let’s try another. Scenario 2… Imagine you are out shopping for a new outfit because your best friend is getting married. You see an outfit that you love, and when you open the tag to check the price you scream ‘this ought to cost an arm and a leg!’ So as you might have guessed, the outfit is incredibly expensive, so much, in fact, you may as well sell your arm and your leg to pay for it. Strange right?
THE GENERAL ACCENT:
So as I mentioned in the introduction, the Australian Accent can be split up into 3 sub-accents: a general accent, a cultivated accent, and a broad accent. Let’s talk about the general Australian accent, or what I like to call the ‘Hugh Jackman’. This is how MOST people sound. We hear the general accent in urban Australia, (urban meaning people who live in big towns or cities with many residents). But who is Hugh Jackman? Well Hugh is one of Australia’s most famous actors who you’ve probably seen in films like Wolverine, The Greatest Showman or Les Miserables. Hugh Jackman’s accent is wanted throughout the film and TV industry because it’s easy to listen to, while also being a little playful. When people with a general accent speak, the first thing we notice is an absence of the letter /r/, it almost seems to disappear. Words like ‘doctor’ or ‘tiger’ sound a lot different to how an American might say them as ‘doctor’ or ‘tiger’. Double letters such as / double t / turn into a d sound rather than a t sound. Take the word butter, you know the delicious creamy spread you put on your toast every morning? Yes I mean butter. It’s not that us Australians are lazy, or we can’t be bothered pronouncing every letter perfectly, it's just that it flows better, it sounds better. Almost like a song. Lastly the general accent includes something called a ‘rising inflection’ or ‘upspeak’. When we ask a question, naturally the tone of our voice rises up at the end. But sometimes, people like Hugh, even when we are not asking a question, we make a statement and end it on a higher note. Some positives of this phenomenon is that we can sound more friendly or enthusiastic about what we are saying. A negative is that sometimes we are not taken seriously as we can sound unsure in what we've just said. Let’s compare two declarative sentences, one without unspeak and one with upspeak and you tell me if you can hear the difference? Let's try without first? “I really like that hat your wearing”. Now let's try with usspeak, “I really like that HAT YOUR WEARING”. Did you catch it?
THE CULTIVATED ACCENT:
Now you’ve got a good handle on the general Australian accent, let’s take a look at the cultivated accent. What does cultivated even mean? According to the Oxford Language Dictionary, being a cultivated person means to be ‘refined’, ‘sophisticated’ and ‘well educated’. A little bit like our friend Cate Blanchett, another Australian actor who you might know from such films as Ocean’s Eleven, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button or The Lord of the Rings. Cate is wanted throughout the film industry because she has a sharpness to her voice, beautiful pronunciation and an extended vocabulary. In fact, she is always chosen to play roles where she ranks high in social status. At times, you might mistake her accent for a British or Transatlantic accent. (where to find?) In my opinion what makes the cultivated accent so lovely is the rounding off of each word. In my first example with Hugh Jackman, we spoke about the disappearing ‘r’ and the ‘t’s’ turning into ‘d’s’. We also spoke about the phenomenon of ‘upseak’. Here we don’t see that, instead we hear every vowel and every consonant enunciated perfectly. Upspeak is very uncommon. In fact we hear ‘downspeak’ where sentences are are falling at the end, creating a sense of authority or confidence and finally Idioms or slang are almost forbidden. Let’s listen to a sentence first with the general accent and compare it to the cultivated accent. Ready? "If ya getta chance to travel y’should definitely see the outback". "If you get a chance to travel you should definitely see the outback."
THE BROAD ACCENT:
Okay, the time has finally come. The moment you’ve been waiting for. The broad accent. Or what I like to call “The Crocodile Dundee”. If you haven’t seen Crocodile Dundee, then let me paint you a picture. Imagine, a beautiful American newspaper writer by the name of Sue Charlton embarks on an adventure to Northern Australia to meet a dirty, masculine, bush ranger called Michael. J Dundee. Sue is entertained at the local pubs, outback Australia and many dangerous animals. However, Sue is NOT entertained by Dundee’s foul language and advances at her. Dundee is sure that Sue cannot survive Australia’s outback alone and follows her with his shotgun and knife to keep her safe. To cut a long story short, the two fall in love, as you would expect, and Sue ends up writing a fabulous article for her fathers Newspaper called the “Newsday” in NYC. What makes Crocodile Dundee so loveable is of course his accent and way of speaking. His accent is overexaggerated, thick and FULL of abbreviations, idioms and as you can imagine many ‘f’ words and 's' words to replace a lack of vocabulary and education. The one line that sticks with Paul Hogan, the actor that played Crocodile Dundee, I don't think I could never do this justice but he says, “that’s not a knife, THIS is a knife”. The word ‘knife’ in itself is completely BROAD. The ‘n’ gets merged with the vowel ‘i’ and is changed completely from a 'knife' sound, to a nasally 'knoife' sound. And it's not just words that have a vowel in the middle but also words that have a vowel at the end. For many broad Australian speakers, words like 'go' or 'no' adapt this almost 'y' sound at the end. So they turn into words like 'noy' and 'goy'.
CAN YOUR ACCENT CHANGE OVER TIME?
Okay, now that we're all professionals heard on the 3 sub-accents of Australia, I have a question for you. Is it possible for your accent to change over time? [pause for 5 seconds]. For me the answer is yes. Now, as far as research goes, our accents become a permanent thing at the age of 12. So let’s imagine you were born in another English speaking country like New Zealand, at the age of 12 you WILL have a New Zealand accent. Much like if you grew up in London, at the age of 12 you WILL have a British accent. However, this is where it gets interesting, it IS possible for accents to change over time (A) if you have been living in a foreign country for a while, or (B) you moved countries before the age of 12. The really cool thing about our brains is that they have something called ‘neural plasticity’, which is the brain's ability to reorganise itself and create new pathways for new information and perhaps even a new accent. Now let’s take me for example, I was born and raised in Australia and at the age of 12 had a general Australian accent. However over my time at a country school and University my accent began to take on some broader tendencies. Fast forward 10 years later teaching English I have noticed that at times my accent shifts into a cultivated accent. I ensure my accent is clear so that my students can understand and learn at their best capacity. At the end of the day, you wouldnàt want your son or daughter learning English from Crocodile Dundee would you?
REFLECTIONS AND OUTRO:
Well if you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for sticking around. Unfortunately now it’s time to say our goodbyes. Just to remind you today's lesson was all about the Australian accent. We first spoke about how strange it can be to foreigners. We then discussed the 3 sub-accents; general, cultivated and broad, and finally to sum everything up, I posed the question can your accent change over time? Next episode I will be discussing Australian food and cuisine. If you would like the entire transcript of this episode for FREE please send me an email at TeacherAdriana1992@gmail.com. Once again, thank you everybody. You've been listening to English with an Aussie.
VOCABULARY:
- without further adieu : another way of saying without any fuss or time wasted.
- foreign : a person located outside one’s own home country.
- idioms : expressions that can’t be understood literally, meaning goes beyond words.
- ought : another way of saying ‘should’. Used to show what is necessary or positive.
- urban : a small city or town that is developing or becoming heavily populated.
- ‘rising inflection’ : a rise of pitch that happens at the end of a sentence.
- phenomenon : an event that happens in which we perceive through the senses. A person can be a phenomenon if they are exceptional at something.
- social status : a rank that a person holds with regards to their duties, lifestyle,
education and families. For example, high class, middle class, lower class. - authority : the power or right to give orders, make decisions and enforce obedience.
- bush ranger : an Australian outlaw living in the bush and most likely causing trouble.
- advances : move forward with a purpose. We use this when somebody is attracted to another person and tries to pursue them with flirting or asking for contact details.
- ‘neural plasticity’ : the nervous system modifying itself functionally and structurally in response to either injury, experience or new abilities.
