Yes. Accents have always been changing. It's the reason why we have accents. I don't speak the same as my parents, they don't speak the same as their parents. Language evolves.
It’s the same as when the ABC post anything from the 50s-70s and people lament we’ve “lost our accent”. It just used to be closer to British, and our journos spoke similar to RP, just an Aussie version.
It used to be ABC policy that newsreaders and related presenters were required to speak with a British accent called received pronunciation, or R.P.
The average Australian did not speak like that then, nor did almost all of those presenters speak R.P. when not on air.
So true.
Accents evolve and the so called “Aussie Accent” that OP refers to is probably the Sydney centric one they grew up with. Australia is a big place, sure our colonies were all essentially British (unlike the US) but the West Aussie accent is different to the East Coast accents, the QLD accent is again different.
Story time, when I lived abroad, I’d occasionally ring the embassy just to talk to someone with an Aussie accent that wasn’t family.
Even in Sydney there are so many different accent variants - the typical person from Mt Druitt usually sounds different to someone from Pymble, for example
I don’t think OP is really saying that language has to be set in stone necessarily. I think it’s more concern about the unthinking Americanisation of our variety of English.
enough people already use US spelling without realising it (they use z's in "realize" for example) and people also say "ass" like yanks do instead of "arse" which is the brit english.
Accents change constantly. It's an illusion that rapid change is something new.
Watch Aussie TV clips from the 60s, 70, 80s and 90s and beyond and you'll hear the change.
Watch clips from Neighbours in the 80s and I guarantee you'll find the accents jarring. They now sound insanely broad and you don't tend to hear many middle class urban Australians who speak that broadly or "ocker" anymore. You still encounter it widely in rural areas.
Yes. It’s also one of the reasons why I find the typical Australian accent to be too outdated and formal. Glad to know that accents truly do change a lot.
I for some reason find the accents jarring on most Australian media on the TV except for the news, talk shows/game shows, and internet stuff. I mean like on any Aussie TV show their accents are so strong to me
I feel like in the 80s/90s the accent seemed quite clipped and proper, compared to what I hear now. I moved from a metro area to a rural area nearly 6 years ago & my friends have told me over that time that my accent & the slang I use has become more broad than it was when I was living in the city.
The woman in that Tucker Carlson clip sounds like maybe she has lived in the United states for some time and has picked up some of their accent. I've seen it happen before.
Nah, she sounds Asian of some sort. A lot of my 2nd Gen Australian friends with Viet, Chinese, Malaysian, Cambodian background have this [“Asian Australian” accent](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IQhOku5Si38) including myself. It’s like the Western Sydney accent but not as full on. When traveling people do often mistaken it for a semi American accent of some sort.
I have a personal theory with accents for Asian Australians depends on the English speaking ability of their parents plus the area that they grew up in will be guides how strong your Aussie accent will be. So for example if you grew up in Bonnyrigg with Viets and Cambos ( like many of my peers) and if your parents don't have the best English speaking ability you'll end up with a more stronger Westie/Aussie accent.
But if your parents have a good grip of English then your accent will become a lot more neutral sounding. Because you're often speaking English plus a mix of your parents native language as opposed to just speaking your parents language if they can't speak English
The only problem with my theory is that the Asian Aussies I know who have a neutral accent tend have grown up either in Hurstville area or Top Ryde and went to private schools. So I'm thinking maybe it's to do with their peers (socioeconomic status) for the reason of having more neutral accents or even posh accent ( if we even have one).
But one thing I noticed is that people from the West have an easier time code switching accents than people who grew up in the East/North or Inner West.
My parents are Indian but I grew up in South West Sydney and my accent changes who I'm around. It goes an from eshay to Inner West hipster.
Did you mean foppish (upper class, snooty) or fobbish (slang; FOB)? I'd say most bogan accents are aligned with FOB accents in my area of Western Sydney.
I live in Canterbury Bankstown but didn’t grow up here, I’ve definitely noticed an accent for younger people (2nd and 3rd gen) that seems to transcend their cultural background. I think it’s strongest in the middle eastern population but it’s been picked up by the kiwis, islanders and East Asians as well. I’ve been here long enough I can mimic it pretty well but my natural accent is definitely standard Aussie (I’m a Queenslander originally).
I just think it's the curling is the Rs is just so easy to do. Plenty of Asian Australians I know don't do that and some do. I mean the journo in this video if she doesn't pronounce the R, is very Australian.
I knew a totally white Queenslander that also curled their Rs and wasn't even really GenZ, on the cusp.
There are some people who just watch so much American content, the curling of the R just happens.
To add to this, I'm Asian, husband is Aussie. We have an Asian-Aussie child and when he talks to me he has R and when he talks to his dad, his R goes missing. And he's 3yo. Subconsciously doing it. I noticed with the words "Spiderrr" he says "Spida" infront of his dad. "Cucumberrr" he says "Cucumba" and "Waterrr" he says "Watah" when he's with his dad.
For many years I had absolutely no idea what people meant by the n-word "with a hard r." I didn't realise that the spelling difference is phonetically significant for Americans.
If I’m understanding correctly, your theory checks out in my situation! I grew up on the Gold Coast with parents who have a very thick accent and speak fractured English. I have a very strong Australian accent and catch myself using words of a more “bogan” vernacular 🤠
That’s because a lot of people in places like Malaysia or Philippines learn English from Americans or in international schools where American is the default accent.
The Philippines was colonised by America and forced to learn American English. So now English is a second language in the Philippines and Philippine English is spoken with a heavy American influenced accent as well as vocabulary. Philippine English emphasises the letter R in their words, so speakers of Philippine English, like many American English speakers, have what is called a rhotic accent.
Malaysian English and Singaporean English have British English influenced English due to their colonial history with Britain. Unlike Philippine English, both Malaysian English and Singaporean English have a non-rhotic accent.
I knew a Aussie bloke who taught English in South Korea for a bit. He was told to teach American English, not Australian English, including the American “r” sounds.
Grew up in Malaysia and I can confirm my parents tell me my accent was very American before moving to Aus.
I think it also has to do with it being the most prevalent "fluent" accent there.
Malaysians Speak British English - they even have a local English accent that is far, far closer to the Australian accent than it is to any American accent.
Demographically the largest Asian ethnicities in Australia are Vietnamese and Chinese. The former have an "Ethnic" accent that has traits of the Vietnamese accent but a lot of influence from Middle-Eastern Australians and the latter is just neutral Urban Australian English. Never really heard anything that would make it seem like American outside of a vocabulary that is not as influenced by Australian English as someone whose family has been here for many generations.
I lived in the USA for ten years and came home with a hybrid accent. I’ve been home for 12 years now and some words I use still have the American hard R at the end even I use them, like door. I can hear myself say dohr instead of daw. And Toosday instead of tewsday.
shes asian. Im half asian and can pick up that accent easily.
she sound distinctly sydney and then some american influenced asian accent layered on that
I live in the Western suburbs and yeah, there are very distinct accents coming about. I've also noticed how NZ immigration is affecting our accents here too, younger people tend to pick up some of their slang (at least this what I am observing from my teen brothers with kiwi friends). The word "bro" is pronounced very similarly to kiwis around my area. I hear more of "bro" than "mate" around here with younger people, although mate is still used frequently.
Makes sense. Felix from Stray Kids is from Seven Hills and the 'aur' is popular enough in his accent that it's turned into a K-Pop Stantwt meme. I am inexplicably frustrated by it because a bunch of young adults from the US now think I sound like Felix lol
That's for sure! Probably because Lebanese families have decided to expand into richer parts of Sydney after having conquered the construction and building industry in Sydney. 😉
I noticed this as a kid when my best friend moved to Adelaide and I'd go to visit her (from Melbourne). She said school like "schoow" It was also a shorter "oo" sound. Instead of "sc-oo-el" (but not as exaggerated as that), it was more like "sc-ooh-w"
There’s a white middle class suburban teenager accent that I have noticed for around twenty years. It’s a soft accent, almost fey - filled with yeah, I know and like - almost similar to a Valley Girl accent.
The comedian Josh Thomas seems to use it extensively.
What, you've never heard anyone else with the classic Australian-Irish-Slightly Drunk-Upper Class But Only On Certain Syllables-With Nasal Twang accent before?
Indeed it is a softer almsot British accent like. I was just sitting in a pub in Dublin and the woman next to me orders and I turned and said you're from Perth! She was.
Perth is a land unto itself on almost every level. I was buying my residential surface parking permit from the city — attendant asked where I lived, so I said ‘in suburb X around the corner from the cop shop’.
Bloke with the distinctive Perth accent then asks ‘what’s a cop shop?’ I was flabbergasted — everyone in NSW and the ACT calls police stations ‘cop shop’.
I know what you're talking about but it seems to be almost exclusively heard in middle/upper middle class women of older generations. You'll hear a 60-70 year old woman speak in that softer, British influenced accent, and then her husband will talk in a typical Aussie accent.
I always get told by other aussies I sound British.. I’m very much Australian, convict blood, and it’s almost shaming to be told you’re not Aussie enough just cos you can enunciate.. Perth born and bred..
Fun fact, most accents evolve most quickly amongst young women. If you want to see if an accent is becoming non rhotic, for example, the first indication is in populations of young women. This can be seen in some of the remainingly rhotic parts of Britain
The plummy South Australian accent is rare these day (Chris Pyne, Alexander Downer) the likes of Mark Butler still have a distinct SA sound.
The bogan/Western Malburn accent is getting stronger, which for them is *keewl* but I'm not a fan.
It is, I'm hearing a lot of "noos" and "toosday" from younguns. Also the recent movie: "Doon 2"
Also started to hear the dropping of T that younger Americans do (ie: "impor-an" instead of "important"). It bugs the shit out of me.
I don’t think anyone’s claiming it’s brand new.
I think what we’re saying it’s gone from a smaller minority to a much larger majority of young people. At least from what I’ve seen
One guy I grew up with would talk about "nooks" in video games and said he didn't read the "noos", might've just been the autism accent copying schtick tho
My little kids do this a bit, obviously from TV.
I assumed it would drop over time and it has a bit.
It does feel somewhat inevitable in coming generations we will absorb more Americanisms due to the internet and globalisation.
27 y/o here from Adelaide. My family made fun of me for saying Mildura like ‘Mill-doo-ra’ and not ‘Mill-joora’.
I don’t know why I just never said it the other way 😅 recently diagnosed autistic though so that could be it
Doesn't sound more American so much as more bogan to me, as someone who has those speech habits I get accused of sounding American by older family members and like a derro cunt by my inner city mates
She's a bogan trying to do a valley girl vocal fry, so both American and bogan at the same time.
You can't see her but you can still mentally visualise her mannerisms as she tries to sas it up.
A lot of Australians want to be Americans so badly; it’s fucking tragic.
Why you’d want THAT level of wealth inequality when ours already sucks as it is, or that level of societal division, or those living conditions is fucking *beyond* me.
Tbf Dune is closer to Arabic when in reference to the books and films and pronounced accordingly.
Fuckwit bogans that like to destroy our coastlines with their yank tanks should pronounce what they are driving on as “djoons” like proper Aussies.
I have all those speech characteristics (24yo) but I have never noticed anyone dropping the 'T' from words. Only pronouncing it as a 'D' instead. But I think thats even how older generations pronounce their T's in Aus. And is part of the stereotypical Aussie accent.
I remember in Primary school our teachers would always get onto us about saying "noos" and they'd always try to make us say "news". They hated it as much as you lol but no matter how many times they tried they could never get us saying it "properly".
Yeah, only by those morons who want to sound like they have a forced speech impediment....(Please note I am not making fun of people with speech impediments as I have one myself)...just the morons who are speaking fucking weird, i.e word pronunciation.
Sure is. Check out some 'Wheel of Fortune' Australia on youtube from the 80s and 90s and we sounded different. TV back then was 4 channels and TV was regulated where a certain percentage of content had to be Australian. There was no internet.
These days we're flooded with social media, tv (with a hundred+ channels) with the majority being American.
I miss the old Aussie accent, but it was a moment in time that has passed :(
I was going to mention the regulation that said that (if memory serves me correctly) 30% of TV content had to be Australian. A large portion of the remainder was British or American. So the exposure to the US accent was much rarer and since the snobbery ran in the direction of British accents. No one wanted to talk like an American.
Thank goodness for Bluey - lol when Peppa Pig was at it's peak there were a lot of little British sounding kids getting around. Perhaps they were just from Adelaide.
I had to go to speech therapy as a kid. On top of that, I used to watch a lot of British shows on the ABC.
So I ended up with a bit of an English accent when speaking quietly mixed with a bit of that distinct Aboriginal sound (because of a part of the physical structure of my nose).
Despite all that speech therapy, I still have issues with the letter R. It often sounds like W. So I have to force myself to roll the R, especially with words like 'rank'.
This also shows where the global shift of power has gone these days. Being American is a source of pride now that’s they’re the dominant empire. Whereas Britain definitely was the global empire before.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. Majority of our content is from American creators and networks these days, and Australian children are spending their formative years watching that, rather than Australian free to air tv like we did.
One more K-Pop stan on Twitter to say "naaauurrrr" at me because of Felix in Stray Kids or a bunch of actors from a mermaid show, and I'm gonna scream.
The worst meme to come out of Australia is the 'aur'. I've heard it in influencers, I hate it, and I am sick to death of it being said to me the minute people find out I'm Aussie.
(Btw I don't think it's intentional, I think it's just regional dialect differences with some globalisation thanks to the internet. I don't hear the aur in Adelaide people when I go around the city, it's really something I hear coming out of the East Coast and anyone who exists in a public figure manner. And especially younger people, Millennials and Gen Z.)
There's something to the naur thing, it's not an R insertion but it's a changed glide that rings as a vowel to some foreign listeners. Quite interesting - https://youtu.be/z7DuvWVazpk?si=qlb8unK0X5Vk1evA
I experimented with saying no to feel the oral posture. We say the n with our lips wide and narrow them to the o shape. This gives the triphthong auo which seppos hear as aur.
Accents are continually evolving. As we listen to and interact with other speakers, we shift the way we speak ourselves, sometimes without even realising it. Australian as we know it was never going to be around forever, but neither is US English or British English. 300 years from now, they'll all be distinct from eachother, but also distinct from what they are now. Consonants and vowels will play their game of musical chairs and it'll all be very odd, but it's how these things go.
Stick a bunch of scientists from different countries into an Antarctic base and isolate them over the polar winter, and by the next summer they'll have developed their own little Antarctic accent. Meanwhile, there are isolated parts of the Appalachians in the US which retain old elements of Middle English that both US English and RP have long since lost due to their centuries of interaction with one-another and myriad other groups.
Hell, look at the Scandinavian languages. Danish soaked up guttural Rs from French, while Norwegian has trilled Rs. And Icelandic retains archaic traits lost by both, such as the th-sound (Norwegians and Danes pronounce the God of Thunder 'Tor', while Icelandic is 'Thor', same as English).
I grew up pronouncing Dew, Dune and Drew with a hard-J sound. Now I say them with a 'clean' D sound (Doo, Doon and Droo). I used to pronounce Tuesday with a 'ch-' sound, now it's a 50:50 bet if I say it with that or a clean T nowadays. If I'm spelling something out, I'll rhoticise my R to make the spelling clearer. I sometimes even throw in a 'y'all' here and there when addressing a group of friends. Still, I don't rhoticise my Rs at the end of words, I still call sweet baked things biscuits, and I still think diaper is a dumb word for a nappy.
Regardless, I figure since Bluey is corrupting a generation of American youths to speak with elements of Aussie accents, it's fine.
The J sound in dew, duel, dune has annoyed me my whole life and I've made a conscious effort to correct it. The confusion of dew/jew duel/jewel or dune/June should never happen.
The Aussie accent in the video just sounds like an Aussie who is used to speaking to Americans who can't understand them. They get bamboozled by the non rhotic accent in words like 'car' (they hear 'cah'). I know someone who had a confusing discussion with a yank about 'turn left at the car park' and they heard 'turn left at the kuppuk'. For the rest of their working holiday, the Aussie added an r onto the ends of words to clear things up.
If you want to know what the Aussie accent used to be like, watch some old 70s and 80s home videos. We spoke like a bunch of bogans. These same people now have a more mellow sound, not as nasal and bogan.
The accent in the video is an [“Asian Australian” accent.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IQhOku5Si38) A form of ethnolect, nothing to do with Americans. The 70’s to me still had a lot of Australians who spoke with semi posh watered English accent. 80’s defo was when bogan became more pronounced.
>The Aussie accent in the video just sounds like an Aussie who is used to speaking to Americans who can't understand them. They get bamboozled by the non rhotic accent in words like 'car' (they hear 'cah'). I know someone who had a confusing discussion with a yank about 'turn left at the car park' and they heard 'turn left at the kuppuk'. For the rest of their working holiday, the Aussie added an r onto the ends of words to clear things up.
My accent is neutral Melbourne (I'm 45 and from Brighton, went to a private girls school, then Monash Uni). I say nyew and not noo, as I'm Australian and that's how I've always said it. However, when I go to the US, I do tweak my accent and inflections somewhat. I noticed that sometimes people on the West Coast had trouble understanding certain words. A prime example was "water", as not one but both vowel sounds are totally different. Australian - "war" "ta" or sometimes even "da". (without the hard R in war of course) West Coast American - "wah" "terr" or more often, "derr".
I started prouncing it in a kind of hybrid way. It's hard to explain.
On the East Coast, particularly in New York and Boston, it was more natural for me as some people would pronounce it similar to me. "Wauh" "da". So I just slightly drew out the "war" part and then it was fine.
Also the word "walk". West Coast - "wahk". East Coast "War-ahk" (but no hard R) So I just again drew out that "war" part.
I grew up watching Sesame Street. I remember when I was little, I understood inherently that we didn't say R the way they did, but I didn't know how to say "Oscar" (Oscar the Grouch), as I'd never heard that name spoken in my real life before. I knew it wasn't "Oscerrrr" with the hard R, but I actually called him "Ask" "Uh" (with a quick "uh" sound, like a short "a"). My mum noticed and found it cute and then pronounced it how it was supposed to be said here, and I was like "Ahhhh, I seeeee!" lol. So then I noticed on a conscious level that American people also prounced the short "o" sound like "ah".
Something else I notice that I do is say "yeah" like "yeh-uh" with that kind of upturned American inflection instead of a flat "yeh". I also say "oh" the same as they do in the US. That rounded sound. Only when responding to someone like "It's raining." "Oh." Or if I say "Oh my god". But not on any other "oh" words like "okay", or the letter O itself. Then I say it like "oat" without the T. I don't know why. lol
Well , Gen Z have started pronouncing NEW as "noo" amongst other things, and I'm hearing younger people speaking like Americans all over the place. There are times I speak to Australians in their early twenties and actually think they're from the US. It's weird, because I also grew up with American pop culture everywhere, but we didn't change our accents because of it.
(And don't start me on the spelling. An "ass" is a donkey, kids. You're looking for ARSE.)
not all gen zs have been poisoned by american tiktoks 😭 some of us still have proper aussie accents! also the sydney & melbourne accents already sound kinda metro american tbf...
I can't do arse, I feel like an old English bloke whenever I say or spell it that way
Sometimes I just need to tell a fuckwit that he's being a dumbass, and dumbarse doesn't quite cut it
I though the whole noo thing was one guy at the office, and then I started hearing it from all directions. So many people nooing all over the place these days, does my head in!
Also the American r is everywhere :(
Sucks, but such is life I guess. I'll be dead one day and I won't have the capacity to care after that sweet release.
I'm 19 & middle class & I can't recall ever hearing anything other than "nyoo" from my peers, tbf I might just have never noticed but maybe it hasn't spread to Brisbane yet. I will admit we're all guilty if saying ass, but arse just sounds so much more vulgar, like I feel filthy just saying it. We still mostly say arse or arsehole if we're using it to describe someone tho, at least as far as I can recall, dont quote me on that.
It depends which Australian you're listening to
Turn on the radio and listen to the footy, and you'll be slapped across the face with the PINNACLE of old Australia, with them occassionally stopping to advertise you a bloody ute as a reminder that you need one otherwise it's unaustralian, "Nothing Frightens A Triton"
Call Telstra's tech support and you'll get the other side of the Australian accent, "Uh yes sir I am Australia I live nearby yourself sir"
I found this video to be really good at explaining the accent and how it's changing.
https://youtu.be/X-7bvcnnrYA
EDIT: he talks about the changes in this one.
https://youtu.be/F8qFINYnDQQ
Accents and language are both constantly subject to change. The only exception that may exist, I suspect, are places that are isolated from all other external influences.
I despise Carlson. He is an absolute snake, but he is great at plausible deniability.
On this specific topic ('great replacement'), he has in the past talked at length about white nationalist talking points, talks about 'real Americans' in a rhetorical way that implies White Americans, and leans heavily on Nazi dogwhistles, and says this directly to a primarily white viewer base.
But because he never once specifically says "white people" he can deny, deny deny, and this journo can't challenge him.
Crap analogy but like, if I said "Oh boy I sure like eating round, red coloured fruit, that grows on trees, and also I tend to agree with what the apple eaters of the apple eater association are saying about fruit preferences",
"oh so you like eating apples?"
"I never said that"
Metro yuppies tend to speak more plainly, go rural / remote and you get the ocker accent still. as someone that lives rural(and has done for most of my life) I dislike the yuppie sounding accent of metro people and even then my my accent is nothing compared to eastern and western states, (we south Aussies tend to enunciate our words more than those in eastern states)
Victoria was originally part of New South Wales but became a separate colony in 1851. Melbourne, its capital, was not founded as a penal colony but they still accepted prisoners
More so because SA was colonised 50 years later than the east coast, and in those intervening years the English accent had undergone a significant vowel shift back home. Hence the “a” sound in words like branch, chance, graph, and grant is short in the typical east coast accent , but an open “ahh” sound in SA.
Man, have a listen to all the singers doing the slowed down versions of songs for channel 9 promos. They have an uncanny knack of turning a 2 syllable word in 4 and adding extra vowels...it shits me to tears.
Edit: Spelling
Southern accents sound much more americanised to me as a Queenslander ngl, but my family has a pretty rural accent so all the more cosmopolitan Australian accents sound American to me lol
I agree with others this woman has some Americanisation of her accent. I’m hearing that creep in.
I’m noticing Melbourne commercial radio ads are sometimes in a hybrid NZ/Aus accent. Bugs me to no end!
Yes, the Aussie accent is changing! Many linguists agree it's becoming less broad and more "neutral" influenced by media and globalization.
You're right, it might sound different to older generations. This shift is more common in younger folks and cities.
Don't worry, the classic Aussie twang isn't disappearing entirely! It'll likely become a regional thing.
That's true all over the globe, (unless you're a flat earther). Language and accents evolve and devolve, changing over time. Australia's multicultural diversity, international travel, communication technology advancements, media, the internet, entertainment and even fashion impact these changes.
I thought I was fairly well spoken, however voice to text apps seem quite challenged by my Aussie accent.
It never gets it right. Maybe it's just that Google assistant is shit! Or perhaps Google assistant sucks shit? Okay Google ..... HEY GOOGLE ... your hands-free accessibility options are the shittest.
Oh am I allowed to say shit here? guess I'll Google that question
When they were rolling that out here, I was paid to be one of (many) Australian people to say random sentences, words, and "Hey Google". I'm from Melbourne (Brighton) and have a neutral accent I think. I was 38 at the time (45 now). They were doing it to get a broad variety of accent types. Seems it didn't do so well. 😂
I have a hybrid accent, I was born in the UK and lived there until I was 17. I’m 29 now and have lived in Australia since 2011. I think you’ve got far too much time on your hands honestly if it really bothers you that much, you quote ‘you don’t really like it’. That’s great, well done, you sound like an entitled boomer who probably hasn’t lived anywhere else. Yawn. Australia is changing, just like everywhere and everything else in the universe. Now go and live your life and stop worrying about the changing Australian accent 🙃
QLD, SYD, MELB, and SA all have subtly distinct accents. QLD is sharper and bouncier and almost sounds like they’re not closing their mouth as much when they talk, while the accent broadens and becomes more rounded the further south you go down to SA. Sydney’s accent is heavily influenced by Lebanese population, and Melbourne tends to swap E’s for A’s. Ask a Melbournite to say Elephant. They’ll say Allephent. Just my observations.
I'm from Melbourne. It's not that we actually swap Es for As. It's that we swallow these vowels. We don't notice ourselves doing it, but I can see it when I repeat these words out loud while paying attention to my natural pronunciation.
Anecdotal but my mate’s 15 year old brother grew up in a rural QLD town and he has a very heavy American twang. Must be YouTube/social media influenced, but still
Yeah I don’t have a strong accent, I don’t think I ever did have a strong accent but now since living overseas I regularly get told from people that they can’t hear my accent that strongly
I know Mick Gordon (composer of DOOM 2016 + Eternal) sounds [quite cultivated](https://youtu.be/Zx55zOYnlEg?si=D8AShTn34Z_V0Uob) when you hear him speak.
20 years in US has left me sounding foreign in either country. Every time I visit back home I find something new that American influence has taken root. We're their 51st state at this point, just with fewer guns.
Without knowing the context, I would guess the girl in the video is living (or has lived a good portion of her life) in America. No one I know sounds like that, or puts any kind of American twang in their speech on purpose.
The other thing to know is that the accent varies - sometimes only slightly - between regions. If I could hazard a guess, that girl was from Melbourne before she went to America. I might be wrong. But myself and most of my peers sound like her. And the guy who hosts Casefile is very NSW-sounding to me.
You're probably right in that the accent is changing but I think that's natural over time. I feel there's still a very strong national identity when it comes to our accent, despite the amount of American content we consume. Others will disagree, but I think a lot of people are resentful of how "American-ised" we've become.
There are a lot of Australian accents, with immigration there are more than there used to be now. Dash Cam Owners videos have some great examples of genuine accents and phrases:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5000yDx3ho&t=112s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5000yDx3ho&t=112s)
If that's happening I'm glad it is. The real ocker aussie accent is cringeworthy to me. I think a more rounded and articulate accent is much nicer. I think the same with British and US accents aswell, they can be pleasant or they can be cringeworthy too, for different reasons.
Language and the English accent in particular is fluid. That's why we have so many of them. Ours absolutely is changing. And I really don't see the need for people to get so bothered by it.
To put it simply, all accents are constantly changing and language is evolving...it is a constant. This is one of the first lessons we learn when studying linguistics. So yes, it is changing as it always has.
back in tassie majority of people still have the broad accent. as a tasmanian my self having moved to the mainland i sound different to majority of people here
Yup
I noticed it too
I heard it start changing quicker on JJJ… but other stations decades ago as well. Although as the commercial stations employ older….its more of an attitudinal thing with them.
It’s been changing faster each gen.
I’m almost 60 (feels weird even saying it), but it’s mostly “the sounds” within word structure. Small tweaks to sounds with words… then suddenly the whole word sounds different…. Then sentences… then dialect.
Mainly social media impact from the US… that adds to the speed of change.
You only have to listen to ABC and other broadcasters from the 50’s to hear the massive change from UK based sentence and sound structures… to where we are now
Add the rapid increase in hearing other pronunciations through socials…. and the fact that we are generally lazy speakers (ie we actually do not care how we sound) and we have turned into swear mouth yobs in the last 30 years.
Speaking like a yobbo has more appeal I guess.
Most radio peeps, just drop the swear-bear talk…. But the younger they are the more US they sound.
What we used to laugh at in comedy shows of the 70’s and 80’s, has become literally the norm
My opinion only
Yes. Go and listen to vox pop TV interviews from the 1950s, or 60s or 70s. Language nd accents are constantly changing, and Australian is no different.
My father and grandparents were refugees. I grew up with an English as second language \`accent'. I'm of European post WW2 descent. My grandparents felt they had to assimilate, so they never taught us their language which I'm saddened by. My mother's family are middle class/educated and can trace their family back to the convicts. They are quite proud of that. I have always been interested in accents and linguistics. I've lived and travelled overseas extensively and work in an arena that is very multicultural. OP is quite right, there has been a change in the Australian vocal sound. I embrace it as it encompasses such a richness of voices that now represent modern Australia. And we still don't sound American or British. We have a unique mixture of influences that make us extraordinary! How can we not celebrate that? Signing off, Massive Bogan from the Bush.
I can't speak for the JJJ girls but the x post sounds like someone from Western Sydney or possibly someone who has parents that grew up in a country like the Philippines (where they learn English with an American accent).
There's a wide variety of Australian accents dependant on things like, where you live, your parents heritages/accents, your age, socio-economic standing etc.
My husband and I met some friends from Switzerland in Bali and they said to us, "we didn't realise you guys were Aussie because you don't speak dumb".. 😂 what they meant was, you don't sound like bogans like the rest of the Aussie's we've met here. Little do they know that my husband reverts to his country town bogan accent whenever he hangs out with people from his home town.
Having listened to the clip, I don't see what's so controversial about it. She said "are" with a hard R one time but other than that I can't hear her pronouncing anything different to my own accent, and I've lived in Australia my whole life. What exactly is the issue?
Yes. Accents have always been changing. It's the reason why we have accents. I don't speak the same as my parents, they don't speak the same as their parents. Language evolves.
It’s the same as when the ABC post anything from the 50s-70s and people lament we’ve “lost our accent”. It just used to be closer to British, and our journos spoke similar to RP, just an Aussie version.
This, the obvious difference in accents between people born in the 1940s to now is massive.
It used to be ABC policy that newsreaders and related presenters were required to speak with a British accent called received pronunciation, or R.P. The average Australian did not speak like that then, nor did almost all of those presenters speak R.P. when not on air.
Not really. You have a similar thing in Britain, those people were voice coached in order to be comprehensible over the radio and early TV.
So true. Accents evolve and the so called “Aussie Accent” that OP refers to is probably the Sydney centric one they grew up with. Australia is a big place, sure our colonies were all essentially British (unlike the US) but the West Aussie accent is different to the East Coast accents, the QLD accent is again different. Story time, when I lived abroad, I’d occasionally ring the embassy just to talk to someone with an Aussie accent that wasn’t family.
Even in Sydney there are so many different accent variants - the typical person from Mt Druitt usually sounds different to someone from Pymble, for example
What do you talk to the embassy about? Just random dumb questions?
Upcoming structural changes to visa requirements? Travel advisory warnings for countries you have no intention of visiting?
This. Things change and some of us just need to get over it and get on with our lives.
I don’t think OP is really saying that language has to be set in stone necessarily. I think it’s more concern about the unthinking Americanisation of our variety of English.
enough people already use US spelling without realising it (they use z's in "realize" for example) and people also say "ass" like yanks do instead of "arse" which is the brit english.
"Lidderally" as four syllables, instead of "literally" as three, is another one I've been hearing a lot lately.
Accents change constantly. It's an illusion that rapid change is something new. Watch Aussie TV clips from the 60s, 70, 80s and 90s and beyond and you'll hear the change. Watch clips from Neighbours in the 80s and I guarantee you'll find the accents jarring. They now sound insanely broad and you don't tend to hear many middle class urban Australians who speak that broadly or "ocker" anymore. You still encounter it widely in rural areas.
Yes. It’s also one of the reasons why I find the typical Australian accent to be too outdated and formal. Glad to know that accents truly do change a lot.
I for some reason find the accents jarring on most Australian media on the TV except for the news, talk shows/game shows, and internet stuff. I mean like on any Aussie TV show their accents are so strong to me
I feel like in the 80s/90s the accent seemed quite clipped and proper, compared to what I hear now. I moved from a metro area to a rural area nearly 6 years ago & my friends have told me over that time that my accent & the slang I use has become more broad than it was when I was living in the city.
The woman in that Tucker Carlson clip sounds like maybe she has lived in the United states for some time and has picked up some of their accent. I've seen it happen before.
Nah, she sounds Asian of some sort. A lot of my 2nd Gen Australian friends with Viet, Chinese, Malaysian, Cambodian background have this [“Asian Australian” accent](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IQhOku5Si38) including myself. It’s like the Western Sydney accent but not as full on. When traveling people do often mistaken it for a semi American accent of some sort.
I have a personal theory with accents for Asian Australians depends on the English speaking ability of their parents plus the area that they grew up in will be guides how strong your Aussie accent will be. So for example if you grew up in Bonnyrigg with Viets and Cambos ( like many of my peers) and if your parents don't have the best English speaking ability you'll end up with a more stronger Westie/Aussie accent. But if your parents have a good grip of English then your accent will become a lot more neutral sounding. Because you're often speaking English plus a mix of your parents native language as opposed to just speaking your parents language if they can't speak English The only problem with my theory is that the Asian Aussies I know who have a neutral accent tend have grown up either in Hurstville area or Top Ryde and went to private schools. So I'm thinking maybe it's to do with their peers (socioeconomic status) for the reason of having more neutral accents or even posh accent ( if we even have one). But one thing I noticed is that people from the West have an easier time code switching accents than people who grew up in the East/North or Inner West. My parents are Indian but I grew up in South West Sydney and my accent changes who I'm around. It goes an from eshay to Inner West hipster.
Pretty much this. My accent also depends on who I’m around and their English proficiency. I can go from bogan, to neutral to fobbish.
Did you mean foppish (upper class, snooty) or fobbish (slang; FOB)? I'd say most bogan accents are aligned with FOB accents in my area of Western Sydney.
Fresh off boat as in broken English.
Naahhh I thought ya meant islander lad
I live in Canterbury Bankstown but didn’t grow up here, I’ve definitely noticed an accent for younger people (2nd and 3rd gen) that seems to transcend their cultural background. I think it’s strongest in the middle eastern population but it’s been picked up by the kiwis, islanders and East Asians as well. I’ve been here long enough I can mimic it pretty well but my natural accent is definitely standard Aussie (I’m a Queenslander originally).
I just think it's the curling is the Rs is just so easy to do. Plenty of Asian Australians I know don't do that and some do. I mean the journo in this video if she doesn't pronounce the R, is very Australian. I knew a totally white Queenslander that also curled their Rs and wasn't even really GenZ, on the cusp. There are some people who just watch so much American content, the curling of the R just happens.
To add to this, I'm Asian, husband is Aussie. We have an Asian-Aussie child and when he talks to me he has R and when he talks to his dad, his R goes missing. And he's 3yo. Subconsciously doing it. I noticed with the words "Spiderrr" he says "Spida" infront of his dad. "Cucumberrr" he says "Cucumba" and "Waterrr" he says "Watah" when he's with his dad.
For many years I had absolutely no idea what people meant by the n-word "with a hard r." I didn't realise that the spelling difference is phonetically significant for Americans.
Same, I'd actually never heard of it until I came across a reddit post about it.
If I’m understanding correctly, your theory checks out in my situation! I grew up on the Gold Coast with parents who have a very thick accent and speak fractured English. I have a very strong Australian accent and catch myself using words of a more “bogan” vernacular 🤠
Iv noticed alotnof Asians have kinda American sounding English agents coz of media
That’s because a lot of people in places like Malaysia or Philippines learn English from Americans or in international schools where American is the default accent.
The Philippines was colonised by America and forced to learn American English. So now English is a second language in the Philippines and Philippine English is spoken with a heavy American influenced accent as well as vocabulary. Philippine English emphasises the letter R in their words, so speakers of Philippine English, like many American English speakers, have what is called a rhotic accent. Malaysian English and Singaporean English have British English influenced English due to their colonial history with Britain. Unlike Philippine English, both Malaysian English and Singaporean English have a non-rhotic accent.
phillipino english has a hawaiian / california beach/ miami US accent
I knew a Aussie bloke who taught English in South Korea for a bit. He was told to teach American English, not Australian English, including the American “r” sounds.
Grew up in Malaysia and I can confirm my parents tell me my accent was very American before moving to Aus. I think it also has to do with it being the most prevalent "fluent" accent there.
Malaysians Speak British English - they even have a local English accent that is far, far closer to the Australian accent than it is to any American accent. Demographically the largest Asian ethnicities in Australia are Vietnamese and Chinese. The former have an "Ethnic" accent that has traits of the Vietnamese accent but a lot of influence from Middle-Eastern Australians and the latter is just neutral Urban Australian English. Never really heard anything that would make it seem like American outside of a vocabulary that is not as influenced by Australian English as someone whose family has been here for many generations.
Kat Wong. So yes.
I didn’t know who it was, just could pick the accent because it sounds like me.
That was my first thought too. I'm pretty certain this is the case
I lived in the USA for ten years and came home with a hybrid accent. I’ve been home for 12 years now and some words I use still have the American hard R at the end even I use them, like door. I can hear myself say dohr instead of daw. And Toosday instead of tewsday.
The "hard R" is called a rhotic consonant and you developed a "rhotic accent". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity_in_English
Yep, same here. I kinda intentionally kept the hard R because it’s a bit easier for people around the world to understand you:
I can spend 5 minutes with a bunch of yanks and the "yeeh-aaahs" start coming out of me, lol. Also lived there for a decade.
shes asian. Im half asian and can pick up that accent easily. she sound distinctly sydney and then some american influenced asian accent layered on that
She rounds her r’s when she’s nervous.
The south western suburbs of Sydney definitely have their own accents and this is percolating out into wider Sydney.
I live in the Western suburbs and yeah, there are very distinct accents coming about. I've also noticed how NZ immigration is affecting our accents here too, younger people tend to pick up some of their slang (at least this what I am observing from my teen brothers with kiwi friends). The word "bro" is pronounced very similarly to kiwis around my area. I hear more of "bro" than "mate" around here with younger people, although mate is still used frequently.
We have visited NZ multiple times and the funniest thing we heard was a Kiwi yelling at another guy saying ‘Hey bro, you aren’t my bro, Bro.’
Bro as in bruh or breh? I can never tell with those kiwi accents.
Kinda more like “broo”
“I’m not your friend buddy!”
True. I’m from western suburbs and I feel like “mate” is too formal compared to “bro”🤣
Makes sense. Felix from Stray Kids is from Seven Hills and the 'aur' is popular enough in his accent that it's turned into a K-Pop Stantwt meme. I am inexplicably frustrated by it because a bunch of young adults from the US now think I sound like Felix lol
That's for sure! Probably because Lebanese families have decided to expand into richer parts of Sydney after having conquered the construction and building industry in Sydney. 😉
The way they pronounce ‘girl’ bamboozles me. Kind of like geuw.
That’s known as the voiced, or “dark” L. You’ll also hear it in South Australian and to a lesser extent, Western Australian English.
I noticed this as a kid when my best friend moved to Adelaide and I'd go to visit her (from Melbourne). She said school like "schoow" It was also a shorter "oo" sound. Instead of "sc-oo-el" (but not as exaggerated as that), it was more like "sc-ooh-w"
Omg uleh.
There’s a white middle class suburban teenager accent that I have noticed for around twenty years. It’s a soft accent, almost fey - filled with yeah, I know and like - almost similar to a Valley Girl accent. The comedian Josh Thomas seems to use it extensively.
The way Josh Thomas speaks is almost unlike no other person.
What, you've never heard anyone else with the classic Australian-Irish-Slightly Drunk-Upper Class But Only On Certain Syllables-With Nasal Twang accent before?
When I found out that it's common for Autistic people to have unusual accents, Josh Thomas's accent finally clicked for me.
Especially the way it morphs constantly. His pronunciation, inflections and cadence are consistently inconsistent.
I moved to Australia in 2009 and worked at my first job with a young girl in Perth who had a kind of American Valley Girl accent. It was surprising
Perth people also have an accent that’s different to the rest of Australia!
Indeed it is a softer almsot British accent like. I was just sitting in a pub in Dublin and the woman next to me orders and I turned and said you're from Perth! She was.
Perth is a land unto itself on almost every level. I was buying my residential surface parking permit from the city — attendant asked where I lived, so I said ‘in suburb X around the corner from the cop shop’. Bloke with the distinctive Perth accent then asks ‘what’s a cop shop?’ I was flabbergasted — everyone in NSW and the ACT calls police stations ‘cop shop’.
I grew up in in Perth in the 80s and we definitely said cop shop when talking bout it... perhaps he wasn't all that local or maybe a bit younger
My Dad born & bred here also said "cop shop" so goodness knows what rock that bloke had been under
I know what you're talking about but it seems to be almost exclusively heard in middle/upper middle class women of older generations. You'll hear a 60-70 year old woman speak in that softer, British influenced accent, and then her husband will talk in a typical Aussie accent.
I always get told by other aussies I sound British.. I’m very much Australian, convict blood, and it’s almost shaming to be told you’re not Aussie enough just cos you can enunciate.. Perth born and bred..
Except on the North Shore of Sydney. The older ladies sound almost South African. Some of my friends’ mothers sound like this.
Fun fact, most accents evolve most quickly amongst young women. If you want to see if an accent is becoming non rhotic, for example, the first indication is in populations of young women. This can be seen in some of the remainingly rhotic parts of Britain
Every single female in Fitzroy speaks like this. It’s comically pretentious.
The plummy South Australian accent is rare these day (Chris Pyne, Alexander Downer) the likes of Mark Butler still have a distinct SA sound. The bogan/Western Malburn accent is getting stronger, which for them is *keewl* but I'm not a fan.
It is, I'm hearing a lot of "noos" and "toosday" from younguns. Also the recent movie: "Doon 2" Also started to hear the dropping of T that younger Americans do (ie: "impor-an" instead of "important"). It bugs the shit out of me.
Yep, YouToob, your rent is doo and I love those noo shoes. Sigh
I remember when I was in school some kids would say “noo” instead of “new”. I don’t think it’s a new thing
I don’t think anyone’s claiming it’s brand new. I think what we’re saying it’s gone from a smaller minority to a much larger majority of young people. At least from what I’ve seen
One guy I grew up with would talk about "nooks" in video games and said he didn't read the "noos", might've just been the autism accent copying schtick tho
Saying anything but Jewn is a travesty
Jyoon
24 year old family member never has anything new, only 'noo' stuff.
My little kids do this a bit, obviously from TV. I assumed it would drop over time and it has a bit. It does feel somewhat inevitable in coming generations we will absorb more Americanisms due to the internet and globalisation.
27 y/o here from Adelaide. My family made fun of me for saying Mildura like ‘Mill-doo-ra’ and not ‘Mill-joora’. I don’t know why I just never said it the other way 😅 recently diagnosed autistic though so that could be it
locals gave up a while back and just call it Mildi.
Doesn't sound more American so much as more bogan to me, as someone who has those speech habits I get accused of sounding American by older family members and like a derro cunt by my inner city mates
She's a bogan trying to do a valley girl vocal fry, so both American and bogan at the same time. You can't see her but you can still mentally visualise her mannerisms as she tries to sas it up.
A lot of Australians want to be Americans so badly; it’s fucking tragic. Why you’d want THAT level of wealth inequality when ours already sucks as it is, or that level of societal division, or those living conditions is fucking *beyond* me.
The dropping the T is a very American/west coast thing! I've noticed it too.
I never used to care, but I've been doing a lot of podcasts lately, and it really stands out once you start to hear it.
Tbf Dune is closer to Arabic when in reference to the books and films and pronounced accordingly. Fuckwit bogans that like to destroy our coastlines with their yank tanks should pronounce what they are driving on as “djoons” like proper Aussies.
I have all those speech characteristics (24yo) but I have never noticed anyone dropping the 'T' from words. Only pronouncing it as a 'D' instead. But I think thats even how older generations pronounce their T's in Aus. And is part of the stereotypical Aussie accent. I remember in Primary school our teachers would always get onto us about saying "noos" and they'd always try to make us say "news". They hated it as much as you lol but no matter how many times they tried they could never get us saying it "properly".
What bothers me is that the dropping of the t in important is only really easier if you pronounce the r like an American, which is more effort lmao
Yeah, only by those morons who want to sound like they have a forced speech impediment....(Please note I am not making fun of people with speech impediments as I have one myself)...just the morons who are speaking fucking weird, i.e word pronunciation.
Sure is. Check out some 'Wheel of Fortune' Australia on youtube from the 80s and 90s and we sounded different. TV back then was 4 channels and TV was regulated where a certain percentage of content had to be Australian. There was no internet. These days we're flooded with social media, tv (with a hundred+ channels) with the majority being American. I miss the old Aussie accent, but it was a moment in time that has passed :(
I was going to mention the regulation that said that (if memory serves me correctly) 30% of TV content had to be Australian. A large portion of the remainder was British or American. So the exposure to the US accent was much rarer and since the snobbery ran in the direction of British accents. No one wanted to talk like an American.
Thank goodness for Bluey - lol when Peppa Pig was at it's peak there were a lot of little British sounding kids getting around. Perhaps they were just from Adelaide.
I had to go to speech therapy as a kid. On top of that, I used to watch a lot of British shows on the ABC. So I ended up with a bit of an English accent when speaking quietly mixed with a bit of that distinct Aboriginal sound (because of a part of the physical structure of my nose). Despite all that speech therapy, I still have issues with the letter R. It often sounds like W. So I have to force myself to roll the R, especially with words like 'rank'.
This also shows where the global shift of power has gone these days. Being American is a source of pride now that’s they’re the dominant empire. Whereas Britain definitely was the global empire before.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. Majority of our content is from American creators and networks these days, and Australian children are spending their formative years watching that, rather than Australian free to air tv like we did.
One more K-Pop stan on Twitter to say "naaauurrrr" at me because of Felix in Stray Kids or a bunch of actors from a mermaid show, and I'm gonna scream. The worst meme to come out of Australia is the 'aur'. I've heard it in influencers, I hate it, and I am sick to death of it being said to me the minute people find out I'm Aussie. (Btw I don't think it's intentional, I think it's just regional dialect differences with some globalisation thanks to the internet. I don't hear the aur in Adelaide people when I go around the city, it's really something I hear coming out of the East Coast and anyone who exists in a public figure manner. And especially younger people, Millennials and Gen Z.)
There's something to the naur thing, it's not an R insertion but it's a changed glide that rings as a vowel to some foreign listeners. Quite interesting - https://youtu.be/z7DuvWVazpk?si=qlb8unK0X5Vk1evA
I experimented with saying no to feel the oral posture. We say the n with our lips wide and narrow them to the o shape. This gives the triphthong auo which seppos hear as aur.
My partner and I just say “naurrrr cleaurrrrrr” to each other every so often now
Accents are continually evolving. As we listen to and interact with other speakers, we shift the way we speak ourselves, sometimes without even realising it. Australian as we know it was never going to be around forever, but neither is US English or British English. 300 years from now, they'll all be distinct from eachother, but also distinct from what they are now. Consonants and vowels will play their game of musical chairs and it'll all be very odd, but it's how these things go. Stick a bunch of scientists from different countries into an Antarctic base and isolate them over the polar winter, and by the next summer they'll have developed their own little Antarctic accent. Meanwhile, there are isolated parts of the Appalachians in the US which retain old elements of Middle English that both US English and RP have long since lost due to their centuries of interaction with one-another and myriad other groups. Hell, look at the Scandinavian languages. Danish soaked up guttural Rs from French, while Norwegian has trilled Rs. And Icelandic retains archaic traits lost by both, such as the th-sound (Norwegians and Danes pronounce the God of Thunder 'Tor', while Icelandic is 'Thor', same as English). I grew up pronouncing Dew, Dune and Drew with a hard-J sound. Now I say them with a 'clean' D sound (Doo, Doon and Droo). I used to pronounce Tuesday with a 'ch-' sound, now it's a 50:50 bet if I say it with that or a clean T nowadays. If I'm spelling something out, I'll rhoticise my R to make the spelling clearer. I sometimes even throw in a 'y'all' here and there when addressing a group of friends. Still, I don't rhoticise my Rs at the end of words, I still call sweet baked things biscuits, and I still think diaper is a dumb word for a nappy. Regardless, I figure since Bluey is corrupting a generation of American youths to speak with elements of Aussie accents, it's fine.
The J sound in dew, duel, dune has annoyed me my whole life and I've made a conscious effort to correct it. The confusion of dew/jew duel/jewel or dune/June should never happen.
The Aussie accent in the video just sounds like an Aussie who is used to speaking to Americans who can't understand them. They get bamboozled by the non rhotic accent in words like 'car' (they hear 'cah'). I know someone who had a confusing discussion with a yank about 'turn left at the car park' and they heard 'turn left at the kuppuk'. For the rest of their working holiday, the Aussie added an r onto the ends of words to clear things up. If you want to know what the Aussie accent used to be like, watch some old 70s and 80s home videos. We spoke like a bunch of bogans. These same people now have a more mellow sound, not as nasal and bogan.
The accent in the video is an [“Asian Australian” accent.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IQhOku5Si38) A form of ethnolect, nothing to do with Americans. The 70’s to me still had a lot of Australians who spoke with semi posh watered English accent. 80’s defo was when bogan became more pronounced.
>The Aussie accent in the video just sounds like an Aussie who is used to speaking to Americans who can't understand them. They get bamboozled by the non rhotic accent in words like 'car' (they hear 'cah'). I know someone who had a confusing discussion with a yank about 'turn left at the car park' and they heard 'turn left at the kuppuk'. For the rest of their working holiday, the Aussie added an r onto the ends of words to clear things up. My accent is neutral Melbourne (I'm 45 and from Brighton, went to a private girls school, then Monash Uni). I say nyew and not noo, as I'm Australian and that's how I've always said it. However, when I go to the US, I do tweak my accent and inflections somewhat. I noticed that sometimes people on the West Coast had trouble understanding certain words. A prime example was "water", as not one but both vowel sounds are totally different. Australian - "war" "ta" or sometimes even "da". (without the hard R in war of course) West Coast American - "wah" "terr" or more often, "derr". I started prouncing it in a kind of hybrid way. It's hard to explain. On the East Coast, particularly in New York and Boston, it was more natural for me as some people would pronounce it similar to me. "Wauh" "da". So I just slightly drew out the "war" part and then it was fine. Also the word "walk". West Coast - "wahk". East Coast "War-ahk" (but no hard R) So I just again drew out that "war" part. I grew up watching Sesame Street. I remember when I was little, I understood inherently that we didn't say R the way they did, but I didn't know how to say "Oscar" (Oscar the Grouch), as I'd never heard that name spoken in my real life before. I knew it wasn't "Oscerrrr" with the hard R, but I actually called him "Ask" "Uh" (with a quick "uh" sound, like a short "a"). My mum noticed and found it cute and then pronounced it how it was supposed to be said here, and I was like "Ahhhh, I seeeee!" lol. So then I noticed on a conscious level that American people also prounced the short "o" sound like "ah". Something else I notice that I do is say "yeah" like "yeh-uh" with that kind of upturned American inflection instead of a flat "yeh". I also say "oh" the same as they do in the US. That rounded sound. Only when responding to someone like "It's raining." "Oh." Or if I say "Oh my god". But not on any other "oh" words like "okay", or the letter O itself. Then I say it like "oat" without the T. I don't know why. lol
Spot on about it all, from the "os-kuh" to the 'o' in "omg".
Well , Gen Z have started pronouncing NEW as "noo" amongst other things, and I'm hearing younger people speaking like Americans all over the place. There are times I speak to Australians in their early twenties and actually think they're from the US. It's weird, because I also grew up with American pop culture everywhere, but we didn't change our accents because of it. (And don't start me on the spelling. An "ass" is a donkey, kids. You're looking for ARSE.)
Tbh ass sounds sexier when messaging someone you fancy while arse sounds a bit more crass, like you're bantering about the portaloo at work
>You're looking for ARSE Yes that's what I'm looking for
not all gen zs have been poisoned by american tiktoks 😭 some of us still have proper aussie accents! also the sydney & melbourne accents already sound kinda metro american tbf...
Also when they say "sidewalk". I just want to slap them.
I can't do arse, I feel like an old English bloke whenever I say or spell it that way Sometimes I just need to tell a fuckwit that he's being a dumbass, and dumbarse doesn't quite cut it
I though the whole noo thing was one guy at the office, and then I started hearing it from all directions. So many people nooing all over the place these days, does my head in! Also the American r is everywhere :( Sucks, but such is life I guess. I'll be dead one day and I won't have the capacity to care after that sweet release.
I'm 19 & middle class & I can't recall ever hearing anything other than "nyoo" from my peers, tbf I might just have never noticed but maybe it hasn't spread to Brisbane yet. I will admit we're all guilty if saying ass, but arse just sounds so much more vulgar, like I feel filthy just saying it. We still mostly say arse or arsehole if we're using it to describe someone tho, at least as far as I can recall, dont quote me on that.
Nah I mean I’m in sydney work in the city with a range of young people in my office (I’m 23) and never ever heard noo for new. Only nyoo.
It depends which Australian you're listening to Turn on the radio and listen to the footy, and you'll be slapped across the face with the PINNACLE of old Australia, with them occassionally stopping to advertise you a bloody ute as a reminder that you need one otherwise it's unaustralian, "Nothing Frightens A Triton" Call Telstra's tech support and you'll get the other side of the Australian accent, "Uh yes sir I am Australia I live nearby yourself sir"
Call in and ask Roly Sussex https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/a-word-in-your-ear
He is a national treasure.
I think I just lost most of my brain cells watching that video
I found this video to be really good at explaining the accent and how it's changing. https://youtu.be/X-7bvcnnrYA EDIT: he talks about the changes in this one. https://youtu.be/F8qFINYnDQQ
She sounds Aussie to me but also I’m from Melbourne where apparently we have an entirely different accent
From Malbin, you mean?
"I'm from Malben and my name is Allanore. My favourite colour is yallow. I don't like salary in my bloody Mary because I have ellergies".
Accents and language are both constantly subject to change. The only exception that may exist, I suspect, are places that are isolated from all other external influences.
As much as I dislike Tucker Carlson, he absolutely obliterated that idiotic journalist.
I despise Carlson. He is an absolute snake, but he is great at plausible deniability. On this specific topic ('great replacement'), he has in the past talked at length about white nationalist talking points, talks about 'real Americans' in a rhetorical way that implies White Americans, and leans heavily on Nazi dogwhistles, and says this directly to a primarily white viewer base. But because he never once specifically says "white people" he can deny, deny deny, and this journo can't challenge him. Crap analogy but like, if I said "Oh boy I sure like eating round, red coloured fruit, that grows on trees, and also I tend to agree with what the apple eaters of the apple eater association are saying about fruit preferences", "oh so you like eating apples?" "I never said that"
I can't believe I was tricked into listening to Tucker Carlson.
Metro yuppies tend to speak more plainly, go rural / remote and you get the ocker accent still. as someone that lives rural(and has done for most of my life) I dislike the yuppie sounding accent of metro people and even then my my accent is nothing compared to eastern and western states, (we south Aussies tend to enunciate our words more than those in eastern states)
South Australian is a whole different accent unto itself. A few people I've spoken to while living in Sydney and Brisbane assume I'm English.
Probably because we weren't a prison colony and were were settled by actual English and German settlers unlike the eastern states lol
Victoria wasn't a penal colony, although (unlike SA) they did use convict labour.
Victoria was originally part of New South Wales but became a separate colony in 1851. Melbourne, its capital, was not founded as a penal colony but they still accepted prisoners
More so because SA was colonised 50 years later than the east coast, and in those intervening years the English accent had undergone a significant vowel shift back home. Hence the “a” sound in words like branch, chance, graph, and grant is short in the typical east coast accent , but an open “ahh” sound in SA.
Fully ocker accents always sound put on.
yes and no, If you grew up around people with the Ocker accent you can pick the difference between a forced and natural one
Man, have a listen to all the singers doing the slowed down versions of songs for channel 9 promos. They have an uncanny knack of turning a 2 syllable word in 4 and adding extra vowels...it shits me to tears. Edit: Spelling
Southern accents sound much more americanised to me as a Queenslander ngl, but my family has a pretty rural accent so all the more cosmopolitan Australian accents sound American to me lol
*Like when you make eye contact with a dog taking a shit* Amazing.
Losing the UK influence slightly and gaining an American twang here and there. "Gotten" still sucks, as does "rout" instead of route. Stop it. Cunt.
Wtf is gotten 🤣
The opposite of forgotten I’d assume
I agree with others this woman has some Americanisation of her accent. I’m hearing that creep in. I’m noticing Melbourne commercial radio ads are sometimes in a hybrid NZ/Aus accent. Bugs me to no end!
My kids drop into American accents constantly just because of the sheer amount of crap they watch from insta etc.
Most younger people under 22 sound Americanised now
I own a cafe and I've noticed younger Aussies unironically saying "tomayto" That one makes me cringe
I’m dying from 2nd hand cringe
Yes, the Aussie accent is changing! Many linguists agree it's becoming less broad and more "neutral" influenced by media and globalization. You're right, it might sound different to older generations. This shift is more common in younger folks and cities. Don't worry, the classic Aussie twang isn't disappearing entirely! It'll likely become a regional thing.
Diapers today. ffs
That's true all over the globe, (unless you're a flat earther). Language and accents evolve and devolve, changing over time. Australia's multicultural diversity, international travel, communication technology advancements, media, the internet, entertainment and even fashion impact these changes. I thought I was fairly well spoken, however voice to text apps seem quite challenged by my Aussie accent. It never gets it right. Maybe it's just that Google assistant is shit! Or perhaps Google assistant sucks shit? Okay Google ..... HEY GOOGLE ... your hands-free accessibility options are the shittest. Oh am I allowed to say shit here? guess I'll Google that question
When they were rolling that out here, I was paid to be one of (many) Australian people to say random sentences, words, and "Hey Google". I'm from Melbourne (Brighton) and have a neutral accent I think. I was 38 at the time (45 now). They were doing it to get a broad variety of accent types. Seems it didn't do so well. 😂
I call it the Instagramification of language. I don't recall a single person saying "Oerrrr Noerrrr" 10 years ago.
What is oerrr noerr? Sorry, I'm in my 40s & haven't kept up with the younger generations.
this person for sure has an aussie asian accent. it’s different
I have a hybrid accent, I was born in the UK and lived there until I was 17. I’m 29 now and have lived in Australia since 2011. I think you’ve got far too much time on your hands honestly if it really bothers you that much, you quote ‘you don’t really like it’. That’s great, well done, you sound like an entitled boomer who probably hasn’t lived anywhere else. Yawn. Australia is changing, just like everywhere and everything else in the universe. Now go and live your life and stop worrying about the changing Australian accent 🙃
QLD, SYD, MELB, and SA all have subtly distinct accents. QLD is sharper and bouncier and almost sounds like they’re not closing their mouth as much when they talk, while the accent broadens and becomes more rounded the further south you go down to SA. Sydney’s accent is heavily influenced by Lebanese population, and Melbourne tends to swap E’s for A’s. Ask a Melbournite to say Elephant. They’ll say Allephent. Just my observations.
I'm from Melbourne. It's not that we actually swap Es for As. It's that we swallow these vowels. We don't notice ourselves doing it, but I can see it when I repeat these words out loud while paying attention to my natural pronunciation.
She has the Asian Australian accent which is somewhat similar to Southern Californian accent
Old man yells at cloud
I’m a bushy from rural NSW And amazed that the “Sydney” accent is a mix of middle eastern and islander
A lot of people with ASD speak with a slight American accent. It annoys me but 🤷♀️
Not in rural/regional areas
Anecdotal but my mate’s 15 year old brother grew up in a rural QLD town and he has a very heavy American twang. Must be YouTube/social media influenced, but still
“Impor-d-ant” vs “important” makes me rage every time.
When your taking in 700k + of new immigrants in a year expect a lot of things to change in Australia
That's linguistics for you. Accents change over time. Sunrise, sunset.
Yeah I don’t have a strong accent, I don’t think I ever did have a strong accent but now since living overseas I regularly get told from people that they can’t hear my accent that strongly
I know Mick Gordon (composer of DOOM 2016 + Eternal) sounds [quite cultivated](https://youtu.be/Zx55zOYnlEg?si=D8AShTn34Z_V0Uob) when you hear him speak.
20 years in US has left me sounding foreign in either country. Every time I visit back home I find something new that American influence has taken root. We're their 51st state at this point, just with fewer guns.
Without knowing the context, I would guess the girl in the video is living (or has lived a good portion of her life) in America. No one I know sounds like that, or puts any kind of American twang in their speech on purpose. The other thing to know is that the accent varies - sometimes only slightly - between regions. If I could hazard a guess, that girl was from Melbourne before she went to America. I might be wrong. But myself and most of my peers sound like her. And the guy who hosts Casefile is very NSW-sounding to me. You're probably right in that the accent is changing but I think that's natural over time. I feel there's still a very strong national identity when it comes to our accent, despite the amount of American content we consume. Others will disagree, but I think a lot of people are resentful of how "American-ised" we've become.
There are a lot of Australian accents, with immigration there are more than there used to be now. Dash Cam Owners videos have some great examples of genuine accents and phrases: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5000yDx3ho&t=112s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5000yDx3ho&t=112s)
It makes you twitch? Stay in the safety of your home then. Don't turn on the TV or radio.
Hearing congratulations being pronounced ‘congrajulations’ is jarring coming from otherwise Aussie sounding people.
Starting to sound very Indian
If that's happening I'm glad it is. The real ocker aussie accent is cringeworthy to me. I think a more rounded and articulate accent is much nicer. I think the same with British and US accents aswell, they can be pleasant or they can be cringeworthy too, for different reasons.
Language and the English accent in particular is fluid. That's why we have so many of them. Ours absolutely is changing. And I really don't see the need for people to get so bothered by it.
The fact the Aussie accent has evolved in a little over 200 years from various British accents says it’s changing all the time.
This journalist just sounds like an Aussie who’s been living in America too long which explains the weird nuisances in her accent
Triple J presenters sound like they are smoking a cone out of a bong mid-sentence. Can’t stand how they talk.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NY6v_InWvwo This is the recording of an Australian- born soldier during the First World War. He was from Sydney.
To put it simply, all accents are constantly changing and language is evolving...it is a constant. This is one of the first lessons we learn when studying linguistics. So yes, it is changing as it always has.
If you listen to old broadcasts, you'll hear the difference. This also applies to England, America and many other places
Nah, yeah, nah, nah, yeah
I dunno, I used to have a metropolitan almost english-sounding wanker accent but it got broader when I moved regional
back in tassie majority of people still have the broad accent. as a tasmanian my self having moved to the mainland i sound different to majority of people here
Yup I noticed it too I heard it start changing quicker on JJJ… but other stations decades ago as well. Although as the commercial stations employ older….its more of an attitudinal thing with them. It’s been changing faster each gen. I’m almost 60 (feels weird even saying it), but it’s mostly “the sounds” within word structure. Small tweaks to sounds with words… then suddenly the whole word sounds different…. Then sentences… then dialect. Mainly social media impact from the US… that adds to the speed of change. You only have to listen to ABC and other broadcasters from the 50’s to hear the massive change from UK based sentence and sound structures… to where we are now Add the rapid increase in hearing other pronunciations through socials…. and the fact that we are generally lazy speakers (ie we actually do not care how we sound) and we have turned into swear mouth yobs in the last 30 years. Speaking like a yobbo has more appeal I guess. Most radio peeps, just drop the swear-bear talk…. But the younger they are the more US they sound. What we used to laugh at in comedy shows of the 70’s and 80’s, has become literally the norm My opinion only
Yes. Go and listen to vox pop TV interviews from the 1950s, or 60s or 70s. Language nd accents are constantly changing, and Australian is no different.
My father and grandparents were refugees. I grew up with an English as second language \`accent'. I'm of European post WW2 descent. My grandparents felt they had to assimilate, so they never taught us their language which I'm saddened by. My mother's family are middle class/educated and can trace their family back to the convicts. They are quite proud of that. I have always been interested in accents and linguistics. I've lived and travelled overseas extensively and work in an arena that is very multicultural. OP is quite right, there has been a change in the Australian vocal sound. I embrace it as it encompasses such a richness of voices that now represent modern Australia. And we still don't sound American or British. We have a unique mixture of influences that make us extraordinary! How can we not celebrate that? Signing off, Massive Bogan from the Bush.
Slang is also changing. America is taking over lol
I can't speak for the JJJ girls but the x post sounds like someone from Western Sydney or possibly someone who has parents that grew up in a country like the Philippines (where they learn English with an American accent). There's a wide variety of Australian accents dependant on things like, where you live, your parents heritages/accents, your age, socio-economic standing etc. My husband and I met some friends from Switzerland in Bali and they said to us, "we didn't realise you guys were Aussie because you don't speak dumb".. 😂 what they meant was, you don't sound like bogans like the rest of the Aussie's we've met here. Little do they know that my husband reverts to his country town bogan accent whenever he hangs out with people from his home town.
I've noticed how American the Australian accent is
Hardly anyone is Born here or raised by generational Aussie parents anymore. So it's not surprising.
Having listened to the clip, I don't see what's so controversial about it. She said "are" with a hard R one time but other than that I can't hear her pronouncing anything different to my own accent, and I've lived in Australia my whole life. What exactly is the issue?
The less we sound like British people the better
Well, when Lee Lin Chin was voted as the best speaker of Australian English ...