On accents and English

English accents and Australian accents are definitely different.  Now that I have lived a little time in both countries, I can confirm that they are different.  If you give me an English person and an Australian person, and you make them speak to me, I can pick out the Australian, and the English, just by accent alone.  Yay me!

However, it is much harder to try to explain in words how the accents are different.  Or even to put my thumb on what it is that I'm hearing.  And it is harder still to try to reproduce the accents.  I can't do it.  I can only say that they are different, and they are accents.  As opposed to the English language that I speak, which is accent free. 

When we lived in England, and Jonathan was three, Jonathan picked up an English accent without thinking.  His friends and teachers spoke that way, so he spoke that way.  Tim and I picked up an English intonation when speaking to little children.  That's the way little children could understand us in England, so that's the way we spoke to them.  My brother Nathan commented on this when he visited, although it was mostly unconscious to us.  I do remember, however, going to the playground our first week back in the US, and hearing a couple of US children speaking to each other, and realizing that we were in a completely different country.  Completely different.

But here, in Australia, Jonathan is a lot older, and so are his friends.  He doesn't have to pick up an Australian accent to be understood, partly because here, that is Right Here, the accents aren't very strong.  We live in a very international area.  I've never had to strain to understand an Australian in Melbourne, although I had to listen very closely to many English people at first in Oxford and it suburbs, and I did have to listen much more closely to speakers in Tasmania. 

In spite of the fact that Jonathan doesn't need an Australian accent to be understood, he is trying to develop one anyway.  He will go for a few hours and speak to us only with his practice accent.  At first, his practice accent sounded a little too US southern, with the long rolling vowels.  But he's getting better.  And as I hear the differences in the words Jonathan says, with his Australian accent, I can finally put my finger on some of the differences between Australian and English accents.  Some of them.

For example, when Jonathan was three years old and living in England, the very first word he learned to say like a native was the word "no".  He pronounced it with a long A sound first, rolling into the long O at the end.  "Nae-oe."  As in, "nae-oe -- you cannot touch that toy."  "Nae-oe.  I will not clean my room." 

In Australia, the word No is pronounced with the long A at the end.  "Noe-ae".  Sometimes it rolls itself into "noi".  Or "noy".  So you see?  Both have the long A mixed in with the long O, but in England you say the A first, then the O, and just the opposite in Australia.

Another huge difference is in the T sounds.  In England, T's are sacred.  The girl is named "Kay-TTee".  She is "liTTle."  Americans roll those into "liddle kady".  However, we keep important T's, like in the words "fifteen", "nineteen.".  Australians throw away T's.  Fifteen is pronounced "fif-daine."  Nineteen is "nine-daine".  And water is "woo-dah." 

Notice that the final R was dropped.  Australians do that.  The English drop their final R's too.  They ask for "BOT-Tled-WOO-TTah", rather than the American "bodduhld watuhrr."  But no one asks for "bodd-led woo-dah" like an Australian. 

And now that I have carefully explained these subtle differences, someone will read this and contradict me with their own better informed examples.  And that is fine.  I am not an expert, just an observer.

Another difference I have observed is in written communications.  In England, no one will ever use your first name, unless you have become special-pinky-friends or something.  You are absolutely required to fill in your title on every form, so that the form letter can be sent to Ms. or Mrs. or Dr. or Prof. or Sir, whichever is appropriate for your Class and Station.  That bothered me.  If there were a generic lady title, like "Mr.", I might have been happy putting that everywhere.  But I didn't feel it was the electric company's business whether or not I was married, what my educational attainment or profession was.  So I kind of picked titles at random.  "Ms." at the doctor, "Dr." at the institute, "Mrs." for the internet bill, "Royal Prince Regent" at the airport.  (You get better service that way.)

In Australia, everyone only uses first names.  It was a huge relief from the beginning to have the school officials greet you with your first name, and sign their first name to their forms.  They've taken this even further than Americans.  Jonathan's teacher is Anika, not Miss Anika or Mrs Anika or Her Royal Highness Anika.  It seems much friendlier to me.  Everyone starts out on equal footing, not automatically filtered by education or marital status. 

In all, Australia seems very friendly.  Or maybe we just got lucky in where we're living and who we've met so far. 

Accidentally knock something over on the way out the door?  "No worries," they say. 

Run into a friend at the store?  "How ya going?"  (Not "how's it going," as you would say in the US.  "How ya going" is a very Australian greeting.)

Oh, and another one, that doesn't really fit here, but I'll add it anyway.  If one of the other kids in your school class does something wrong that the teacher should know about?  "I'm going to tell off you!"  Whereas in the US, they would "tell ON you."  You see the difference? 

I feel so culturally enlightened!