i don’t go UP
Something wonderful happened to me in a conversation about accents.
I was told I don’t go up at the end of every SENTENCE.
Like many Oztrayans DO.
People get very annoyed by THIS.
Quite RIGHTLY.
Sorry.
Apparently in England there used to be 400 odd accents, I have no idea if that is true, and now there is apparently like 40, not sure if that is true either.
Australia doesn’t have many accents.
It’s a good thing i think, in England, you can sort of classify someone based on how they speak, in Australia, that is much harder to do.
North Queensland definitely has the New Texas drawl, so if you hear that you can tune out for a while without missing much.
Adelaide sounds more like New Zealand, or they just say Bro a lot, so you listen to them, but never quite work out what they are saying.
Bogan (Australian for Chav) is an accent, but it doesn’t seem to matter where you come from for that one, but once you speak like a bogan, you are a bogan for life, even if you are a rocket doctor or sumting.
The other accent that is very prevalent to me is the European Australian accent.
People from Greek, Croation, Italian and those type of eurpean type backgrounds have a very special accent.
It doesn’t seem to matter where you were born for this accent, it just matters where your parents or grandparents were born.
The sound of that accent is part Crocodile Dundee and part Deniro in raging bull, and has earned alot of comedians money when they weren’t that funny.
Like the Irish.
I have always wondered why Australians don’t have more accents, but I haven’t thought about it very hard, couldn’t be bothered really.
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I think the number of English accents depends on how sensitive/well-trained your ear is. Anything from 4 to 40,000.
The first time I recognised that there are differences across London accents was when I noticed that Sex Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook had the same accent (they are both from Shepherds Bush – West London), which was different to the accent that Johnny Rotten and Malcolm McLaren seemed to share (they’re from Finsbury Park and Stoke Newington, respectively – neighbouring areas of North London).
4 for me then, you all sounds the same to me.
Yeah. I struggle with South Island Kiwis. Their accents are usually too pleasant and I immediately think they’re Aussies before a stray flat vowel brings me to my senses.
Wellingtonians though could never be anything but. Poor bastards.
Jrod, have you not noticed the difference in Australians accents since you have lived away from Oz? It’s not as obvious as in the UK granted, but since I left Australia (been in the UK since 2001) I have started trying to guess where Australian people on TV are from by their accent.
It’s not foolproof, to be fair, but there are some differences – for example, Perth people have a softer accent than people in Sydney, who I think are the worst for “going up at the end of sentences” (as someone said) and Northen QLDers can be picked a mile away (think Muriel’s Wedding). Rural West Aussies have quite a harsh accent but still not as harsh as the Nth Qlders.
Maybe I’m nuts, but it seems that way to me.