Hi I'm Joel and I'm Lia and today we're gonna be talking a little bit about the
differences between an Australian accent and an English accent
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missing that if you're not following! Right so, we've had a few comments not
that many but a few people saying that "is our English accent the same as
Australian accents?" so we thought we'd do a video just to clear up the differences
because they are quite similar but also they are very different
so here are four differences that we've noticed from the Australian accent the
English accent and this video is just an overview of these it's not going into
major detail please let us know if you would like that video in the comments
below. So the first difference of an Australian accent to an English one is
something called Alveolar Flapping which sounds rude flap flap flap of the tongue.
So it's more of a similarity to American English than it is to British
English because Australians tend to flap their T's and their D's so in words like
water they'd say 'wa-der' instead of butter
they say 'bu-der'. Water, Ladder anything with a D, double D, Double T basically. But
they still have the non rhoticity that we have so they don't say 'water' American
say 'water'. But they don't say 'water' they say 'water' yes so they're not
emphasising the R on the end of words but how would we say it 'water water'
water butter butter butter water and it would only be in slang English that we
might say water or butter yeah but then that's even slightly different because
that one with London where they say butter that's a
glottal stop so they're saying 'but-ter' which is different to the flap of the tongue we
say butter. It is different, well noticed Joel, thank you
So worth listening out for that flap. What's the
complex word: Alveolar. If you want the long word is intervocalic alveolar flap
so that's what you'll probably get if you're listening to an audiobook about
language yeah which what does that mean to you you don't need to know that. It means nothing just
call it a flap, it's fine. Let's all remember our flaps. Number one: flap we've talked a little bit about
rhoticity but mainly flap so linking on from the flap which is number one we're
going to talk a little bit about rhoticity which is number two so as we
mentioned Australians don't have the Rhotic R which means that at the end of
at the end of words that end in ER they'll just drop it and leave it open
like we said with water teacher water teacher letter um similar to British
but very different to American. Like you said it's very similar to
British and that's probably one of the reasons why people get confused between
Australian English and British English is because we both sound non-rhotic so
to an Americans ear, they're thinking oh you're just all part of the same thing
but that's just one feature that we share with with Australians and
as a Brit do you feel that Australians sound closer to us than Americans
because I do, do you, yeah I think so in my head
you've got British English speakers here and you've got American English speakers
here and Australians are in the middle I think we share similar features because
the flapping is a very American feature yet the non rhoticity
is a very British feature so I feel like they are in the middle yeah about right
and there's so many Australians in London as well yeah
become so much you just hear all the time we haven't actually given them an
example of what it sounds like maybe we need to talk a bit in Australian
In Australian? Joel watches a lot of Neighbours
I love Neighbours and I watch it all the time and well I don't watch it so much
anymore because I ran out of time because it's 20 minutes a day
and that's like so hard to keep up with but if you think about it secretly Joel
we have been watching one hour a day of Love Island. Love Island is taking over
our lives like seriously so let's move on so
that's just a little snippet of us trying out Australian obviously we're not
experts but this is just because there's so many Australians in London we hear it
quite a lot definitely and like every accent you get extremes and non
extremes you'll find some Australians have a very subtle accent whereas
others will be really harsh so obviously this Australian accent we're doing can't
represent the whole of the country our friend Trent from Trent and Luke lives
over here in London and I can't even hear it
no just occasionally you'll hear an elongated vowel you'll go oh he's Australian so
that's our third point the elongated vowel yeah obviously like Joel said it
can be a little bit stereotypical to assume that every Australian says their
words quite extended with the vowel sounds and that's done by widening
the mouth but see they don't talk like that they're not slow and no they don't
elongate it like that much but they just they extend it more than we would in our
accent, so we want to say my life story and then Australia might say my life
story so I think already that sounds a bit extended it does doesn't it?
My life story and when you do say your vowels so extended the words become
clearer and they land on people yeah Australians are great public speakers I
think the words really land yeah I love it I read an article recently
they were saying that Australian accents grate on them I don't think it does at
all I think it's a really nice soothing accent and I like you said I think I
automatically listen more when it's an Australian speaking because yeah they do
they land it more. I like it. As well as elongating the vowel sounds Australians tend to
have a quite a sing song-y rhythm to the way they speak yeah and they tend to
end on a rising intonation so I think it's called... I can't remember it's from my
linguistic days at University. Something like Australian rising
intonation I think it's called ARI I might be getting it wrong anyway
Australians tend to have constant rising intonation even when they're not asking
questions so like they'll always talk like this when they're not even asking
questions and like that is very overdone stereotype yeah but that's the sort of
thing they'll do. And that is perhaps what the article you read was referring to
when it said that the accent grates on them a little bit. Coz we tend to
end on a minor note, we go down, always go down 'oh my god' where they go 'oh my god'
yeah it goes up and it's quite sing song-y yeah, it's quite up and down Welsh sing song-y
They go up and down when they're talking like this and they're really
colourful with what they're saying if you would just sort of draw a graph of
where the vocal tones are going yeah
And one of the final things to note is the abbreviations that they use are
different to the abbreviations that we use in British English now this is my
favourite thing that I'm actually not aware of until we were just planning
this video 5 minutes ago. I can't beleive you haven't heard of it, that's probably because I watch Australian soaps and stuff yes but
so instead of saying this afternoon they might say that but they'll
also say this arvo so they abbreviate this afternoon to this arvo
Sounds so posh you can just imagine a Brit saying 'this arvo' yeah it's such 'ra-ra' like, Sloane Square, posh people
it's so funny yeah but there'd be like 'what're you doing this arvo?' and then they
also I've not heard this one but I saw it online bizzo instead of business
so that's none of your bizzo! I have never heard anyone on Neighbours use the
word bizzo for business. Independent Bizzo Woman! So Trent, if you're watching this, can you let us
know whether you actually say bizzo. I'm gunna ask our Australian friends
how true that is. If it's like 'oh yeah only lame people would say that'
but also you know this one, instead of Barbecue they'd say Barbie oh yeah shrimp
on the barbie that's the classic the classic Australian Stereotype. They'd say Barbie instead of Barbecue. I can't say that without thinking of Barbie dolls
That's our sort of four main differences that we can think of off the
bat about the difference between Australian and English yeah I really
love doing this video if you want us to do another in-depth Australian one let uss
know coz I love the Australian accent. We used to do it all the time.
We did! We used to refer to each other as cousins yeah 'hello cousin' we used to do Australian ALL THE TIME
now it's Essex we just do Essex. We're a joke. Let's do our outro in Australian
let's start again one two three so guys thank you so much for watching
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send you in the post or a personalised letter ... flap, flap, letter!
oh my god doesn't do this accent just give you so much energy I know you like
come on come on we can do this. So don't forget to go and
click that if you're interested if not just click the thumbs up and we'll see
you next week. Speak soon! Bye! G'day! Back to our normal selves. Coz that's too much effort, exhausting!