Plan B Forum

The stuff on the grill looks yummy....

A real Aussie bloke does not let tomatoes get that close to the meat!

Why do Australians talk so peculiarly? Listening to the tennis commentary is almost anguish . . . "the pliers are whiting for the gyme to start". Does no-one ever say "Strewth! I was just listening to someone speak proper and they were saying 'players, waiting, game'. Mybe we should try thit"

Meade

I must admit I was about 15 or 20 seconds into the video before I realized that he was speaking English.

It's not in English, it's in "strine"

As I've mentioned before, the Australian accent is very similar to the cockney British accent, only not quite as posh...

Curiously, the Australian accent is also very similar to that of white South Africans...

The reason the Australian accent is what it is, is a result of history, (which is no reflection on current living Australians)

The fact is, that Australia was originally established as a British penal colony...it's not surprising that the bulk of those folks came from the lower classes of British society, and thus spoke with what would be considered lower class accents by British standards...

Additionally, Australia received a second major influx of population from a gold rush in the mid 1800s:

The number of convicts pales in comparison to the immigrants who arrived in Australia in the 1851–1871 gold rush. In 1852 alone, 370,000 immigrants arrived in Australia. By 1871 the total population had nearly quadrupled from 430,000 to 1.7 million people.[2] The last convicts to be transported to Australia arrived in Western Australia in 1868.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convicts_in_Australia

Folks who are drawn to "gold rushes" are not likely to be drawn from the highest echelons of society; so again, one would expect that the accents they brought with them would reflect that....

I want to make very clear that in pointing these things out, that I am not trying to make some sort of rubato-type slam claiming that contemporary Australians are "lower class" people...

I'm just engaging in a little linguistic history to help explain how the dominant accent that most Australians speak with today came about...

Interesting Jim. To my ear, the vowel sounds of the Aussie accent are pure Brummie (alroight, hows it gowing) while those of the Kiwis are more like Glaswegian (fush n chups).

On a related note, this morning I noticed (to my horror) for the first time a slight Aussie twang in my voice as I informed a fellow motorist that he was, in fact, a "fucking idiot".

To my ear, the vowel sounds of the Aussie accent are pure Brummie

So that cunning linguist Ozzy could be Oz born...

Gold!! :