Australian voices really aren't what they used to be. Linguists and ABC presenters weigh in on the changes to Aussie voices and the death of the ABC accent.
Although I am sure that a lot of the right-wing neo-regressive nut jobs that have popped up in Australia over the last few years would love to refer to her as “anti-Jack” because of the transgender nature of the show.
Yeah we need to resolve that first. Aunts are cool and take you to a theme park on summer break, whereas aunts don't let you sit on the good furniture and the only candy they have are those lozenges with the wrapper that looks like a strawberry
As a General American speaker, all three of those are the same vowel for me, but I don't think that's true in a lot of the world (and also not in at least part of the US).
If you say “France” or “dance” in a way that rhymes with “aunts”, you will open yourself up to merciless ribbing, with people affecting a posh English “oh I say old chap” accent every time you’re around. Far better to play up the Aussie drawl (and if in doubt, shorten a few words by replacing the last vowel with “-o”) to leave no doubt that you’re a true-blue dinky-di Aussie whose ancestors were transported for stealing a loaf of bread rather than someone who’d rather be wearing a top hat and sipping a Pimm’s.
Not if you call it “Lightly Panko crumbed oven baked Delatite Chicken Breast with smoked ham, Napoli sauce & Mozzerella cheese with your choice of two sides.”
Sorry for the quality of the photo, it was taken in a “lightly fried beer and flour battered, thinly sliced potato”
Across Australia, linguists are revolutionising the understanding of how Aussies' voices differ from one another, fuelling new insights into what was once thought to be a monolithic accent.
In a 2023 research paper, Debbie Loakes and other linguists at the University of Melbourne found the Victorian habit of pronouncing "el" and "al" the same way (eg "celery" becomes "salary") was dying out among young people in the state's north, but persisting in the south.
Dr Loakes says linguists used to think younger Australians were trending away from the broad and cultivated accents toward a more general voice, but that recent work suggests the changes are more complicated.
ABC listeners may be familiar with the archetypal cadence and tone of Australia's national broadcaster, which certainly falls into the cultivated accent camp.
However, listening to archival recordings makes it clear that the "ABC accent" is far milder today than it was just a few decades ago, and many presenters actively reject it.
Despite recognising that people perceive varieties of Australian English differently, linguists have shied away from classifying them as separate accents.
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Personally I say graph with [ɑː], but there's something about the way Kohler says it that sounds more palatable than the American /æ/. I'm not really sure what it is.