G'day, guys! What's going on?
I just stumbled upon this article online and thought it was an interesting one as I had been thinking about this recently
Anyway, the article was on macquariedictionary.com.au
If you guys want an Australian dictionary, if you are learning Australian English
This is a great website to check out, they have a lot of Australian specific content
Anyway, yeah, so I was on this site found this article ''Our Chief Editor on the Influence of Other English's on Australian English''.
The Daily Telegraph published an article discussing the rise in Aussie kids picking up U.S slang and
pronunciation from games and streaming services
Among other examples that pointed out, more kids are choosing to say Z instead of Z for the last letter of the alphabet
Australia we usually say Z, Americans would say Z, at least we'll see what happens in the future, huh? They pronounce
I won't do this correctly, they pronounced offense and defense...wait a second
Offense and defense with the emphasis on the first syllable
Offense/defense. I was practicing these before because I was like "what? Americans say them differently?' That's why I was confused
so, they're putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable there, offense or offense instead of offense and
changing the U sound in words such as due
duplicate and
Attitude. Now, that is a big one. That is a big one that Americans do that. We don't do so, we do something that's called
Assimilation where you have the sound, the D sound, the T sound, all the sounds before the U sound, the U
Modifies the sound before it, right? So, instead of
do and
Duplicate, attitude, I would say due,
duplicate and
attitude, right?
so, that's an interesting one. Also taking over our trend in your words from YouTube stars such as
T for scandalous gossip
Never heard that
Lit to describe something amazing. I think I have heard Americans say it, that's really lit
Or shade to trash someone while bathroom has largely replaced toilet and but is preferred to bum
How can these kids be doing this to us? Here in Australia
We have always taken up words and expressions from other english-speaking parts of the world. Now, this is true
I do this all the time and to be honest
Sometimes I misspell words, right?
So in American English, they'll spell words say ending in ISE in British and Australian English
They'll spell it with a Z, IZE
They'll write words like centre, instead of RE, they'll write ER
Sometimes I make those mistakes and the problem
I think I have is that all the programs on the computers tend to use American English as default, too
And so I always have to go through and try and correct all of them
So there's no denying that US English has become the greatest overseas influence on Australian English and probably all other forms of English
Probably since World War two
That influence has grown
exponentially in recent years first with films and TV and then the internet, social media, YouTube and computer games and I hadn't really thought
about the effect of computer games on changing English and streaming stuff live and
I guess that's because that's not part of what I do
I don't really watch that kind of content or play many computer games
But I know that kids these days watch a lot of computer games being played online,
They watch a lot of streamers online and I guess a lot of them are American so, that's crazy
So, the U.S. is being exposed to Australian English as well through our films and TV and the internet think "selfie" and "budgie smugglers"
Never knew that selfie was an Australian word, though, it makes sense because we have a lot of IE words,
but there is obviously a huge discrepancy between the amount of US material that we are exposed to and the amount of
Australian content that Americans see. That's true although it sometimes seems that Australians especially the younger demographic are
Unquestionably adopting US English. There is actually some selectiveness going on. That's interesting
We still say thongs for the things that put on our feet, right? Instead of flip-flops
We go up to the street to buy a barbecue chook. That's a chicken, right? You'll buy a chook.
We go to the footy and we take an esky, a cooler, to the football and we have bucks parties
Yeah, I didn't even know what you call them, bachelor party or something? In American English
I've always thought that was a common one everyone uses and we still have lounge rooms and drive Utes and light the barbie up
We're still bogans and bludgers and DAGs. We still take sickies
That's like not going to work because you've called in and said you were sick
So, you've taken a sick day and a sick day is called a sickie and if the other kids muck up they do something wrong
We might dob on them
That's to tell the teacher in an Australian accent there. So yeah, that's pretty, it's an interesting article and
The
Daily Telegraph
Also had it here and they showed a video of these
Australian kids using a lot of American words for things like cookie instead of biscuit and
tomato instead of tomato and so, it is interesting and they were also mentioning how much YouTube and Netflix is
affecting
our children because although the the
TV in Australia
And probably in all other countries as well tends to have quotas on how much foreign content can be on the TV especially for children
For obvious reasons, right? They don't want children growing up watching
Foreign dialects because it would you know, undoubtedly
cause the native dialect to disappear and
So, they were saying that while TV has local content rules that can help or the Aussie accent and keep it alive, the U.S
Lingos influence on how young Australians speak and sound is unlimited online
so, kids are watching heaps of Netflix and YouTube and the bulk of the content on there is
American anyway, I thought I would talk a little bit about
The history of the Australian accent, Australian English, right? Because it is a kind of cool history
We are a colony of migrants or immigrants
a lot of people that came from different parts of England
Originally, and I think Scotland and Ireland and then many other places in the world
But the first people to come to Australia obviously brought their accents, right? And they were all living in very small
communities in Australia
but with lots of different accents going on and
Another part of it was the fact that the majority of them were convicts. They were criminals so, they weren't upper class
British folk worried about maintaining, you know, their accents. And so I think this is why
Australia uses a heap of slang, why we are very anti the class-based system
We like to call people mate. Anyway, check this out
The earliest form of Australian English was spoken by children of the colonists in early New South Wales
That's the state that they colonized first. This first generation of native born children
So, the children born in Australia, created a new dialect that was to become the language of the nation
So that's really cool because the Australian born children
that were born in this new colony were exposed to a wide range of dialects, a wide range of slang, a wide range of
accents
From all over the British Isles, Island and southeast England and they obviously mixed it together
Right? Because you have these children all hanging out together all learning together all growing up together
so, they're going to, you know, sound the same, they're going to
They'll be affected by their parents initially you would imagine, but once they start spending time together as you'll see when foreigners come to
Places like Australia and raise their children here and the children go to school
Within a year they have an Australian accent, right? Depending on their age
So, the native-born children in the colony created the new dialect from the speech they heard around them and with it expressed peer
Solidarity, even when new settlers arrived
The new dialect was strong enough to blunt other patterns of speech
So, there you go! Pretty interesting story about the Australian accent and what's going on with the influence of other foreign
dialects of English, particularly American English, so is Australian English going to die? Well,
eventually, maybe a hundred, a thousand years from now, but I think we're definitely going to hold on to our
Identity, our slang and the majority of our accent, you know,
We may say the odd word like an American if we see a lot of it on TV
But I'm not worried about Australian English dying out anytime soon
Anyway, guys
I'm Pete from the Aussie English podcast, a podcast that I release English learning content for anyone interested in
Australian English, if you want to check that out, go to theaussieenglishpodcast.com and aside from that
I hope you have a ripper of a day and I see you in the next video. Peace!